NBA Elite 11 has had a tough ride. As the successor to EA Sports’ Live franchise, the hope was that Elite would be able to convince fans of the NBA 2K series to make the jump back to EA based on their pedigree of delivering solid sports titles. Unfortunately, after a poor showing with the game’s demo, the decision came through to delay the game indefinitely, missing the start of the NBA season. Many feared the game would eventually end up being shelved seeing as how these types of sports games rely heavily on their release date and, unfortunately, that is the case. NBA Elite 11 is indeed cancelled.

When it was first announced that NBA Elite was delayed and was likely to miss the start of the ’10-’11 basketball season many saw this as the dagger in any potential for Elite selling well. With NBA 2K11, the new king of basketball games, releasing to positive reviews and the decision to release NBA Jam, what was once a tie-in with Elite, as it’s own retail release there was too much working against the game to make it work.

Moving forward, perhaps Elite can find a new platform for which to tout itself as a competitor to the 2K series. EA Tiburon has seen great success with both the Madden and NCAA franchises and are among the most competent developers to be passing the Elite torch to. It is certainly heartbreaking to those who've followed EA Sports’ series of games, but are now forced to either try out 2K11 or go a year without their fix of Lebron James.

As we reported earlier NBA Live 10 is still going to be functioning like Elite 11 with roster updates and what not but the improved mechanics that were expected in Elite will obviously not be added to the game. For now we must say goodbye to NBA Elite and hope that it returns to us next year, ready to go.

Do you think EA Sports made the right decision in cancelling NBA Elite 11 or would you have rather they released the game in poor condition?

Source: G4