I've been playing since 1997 when my mom got me my first copy of NBA Live for Xmas. As a basketball fan in general I took to it like a fish to water and I still have that passion for the game. It was with this excitement that I started development of NBA Live 10 PSP in Early 2009. I worked as the Assistant producer on the project with HB Studios. HB does a lot of work with EA but generally they only appear in the credits (which most people don't watch on sports titles ><).
Development time was around 9 months and we worked right up to the end on improving some of the crucial elements which had been inherited by my team. AI was our main focus as the defense in 09 was lacking and allowed a user to simply drive and dunk on every possession.
A few months ago the title launched and I was able to go into my local Gamestop and actually pick up my first title that I was able to be a part of. Almost a full year of my life went into the project and I have to say that I am really proud of the team and what we were able to accomplish in such a small timeframe. So the reviews are out and we've improved on last year's reviews which feels great, wish we could have pushed it higher in Metacritic but one or two bad reviews are dragging us down (doesn't even seem like they played the game based on their talking points). 2K is still ahead by inches on 360 and PS3 but we beat them out on PSP :) With the strong dev team at EAC working on Live 11 I think this could be the year EA re-takes their basketball crown. A lot of new game-play and fundemental system changes went into Live 10 and it really shows. Another year of dev time to tighten up those new elements may be the final push past 2K. Either way as a basketball and videogame fanboy, I win.
I've already worked on another EA sports title that is set to ship in February (when I can talk about that development more). Let's just say that it is DLC for one of EA's biggest sports titles. Now I'm working with Atari on a project set to launch Fall 2010, I can't talk a lot about it now but it's going to be a strong product in it's market.
