Ballers hanging out for a new Basketball sim title from EA Sports this year will have to put their plans on hold for another year, as an official statement from EA Sports VP Andrew Wilson regretfully informs that development of NBA Live 13 has been cancelled.

The game's fate follows that of NBA Live 11 (which was re-titled NBA Elite 11 during development) two years ago, the cancellation of which broke a 16 year annual tradition of the series --21 years if you count the original NBA Playoffs games that preceded the "Live" branding.

When we started the process of bringing back NBA LIVE, we knew it was going to be a long journey. We started by moving the game to a new studio. We brought in some of the best new technology that has helped fuel innovation in our other games. We launched an even deeper level of engagement with our community to gather more feedback directly from fans. And we built a whole new development team to bring it all to life. We felt like we were on the right path.

We also made a commitment to deliver a high quality experience — this is what our fans expect and what we demand of ourselves at EA SPORTS. But making great games is not easy, and we're just not there yet on NBA LIVE 13. Having continued to look at the game over the past few days, it's clear that we won't be ready in October. And rather than launch midway through the season, we're going to sit out the full year and stay focused on making next year’s game great. This decision puts us on the right track for success well into the future in a rapidly changing industry.

The news comes as somewhat of a surprise, as a gameplay reveal trailer for NBA Live 13 only dropped a couple of weeks ago.

The iterative development process of EA Sports games is quite different to traditional game development, as FIFA Producer David Rutter explained to us recently, features that require longer to polish are often pushed back next year's game. This time, it's the entire game.


NBA Live 13 "First Look" Trailer