EA Sports today revealed Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook as the cover athlete for NBA Live 16, which will release on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this fall.
“Russell Westbrook is a player who can do it all, and we can’t imagine a better fit for the cover of NBA LIVE 16,” said EA SPORTS VP of Marketing Anthony Stevenson. “NBA LIVE 16 is all about self-expression, and who better embodies that than Westbrook, both on and off the court? Russell plays every game like he has something to prove. Our team is building NBA LIVE the exact same way, so we’re thrilled to have him as an ambassador for our game.”
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The NBA Live series has struggled to recover from an ill-advised decision to reimagine the series in 2010 with a dramatic change to controls and a new name (NBA Elite 11). The game was such a disaster that it was cancelled only a week prior to arriving in stores for release.
After another cancellation — of what would have been NBA Live 13 — the series relaunched on the new generation of consoles with NBA Live 14. That game was decimated by reviewers and sales were poor. NBA Live 15 was much better — basically the game that should have been released the prior year — but sales dropped even further, bringing into question whether the series would be shut down for good. It remains on shaky ground and will have to show growth this year.
Interestingly, Westbrook's teammate Kevin Durant was the frontman for NBA Elite 11, and he found out about the game's cancellation through Twitter of all places, further damaging the relationship with one of the game's bright young superstars. Only a couple years later, Durant would shift alliances to 2K Sports where he has since been featured on the covers of NBA 2K13 and NBA 2K15.
The release date for NBA Live 16 has yet to be announced. The competition in NBA 2K, which dominates the market, has moved up into September. The last two editions of NBA Live have come out after NBA 2K, and that seems likely to happen again this year. A release closer to the start of the actual NBA season would make sense, to captalize on that excitement, and to get some distance not only from the rollout of NBA 2K16 but several other huge sports games that release from late August through September.
Bryan Wiedey posts sports gaming news and analysis daily at Pastapadre.com, has co-founded the new site HitThePass.com, is a regular participant in the Press Row Podcast and Hangout shows, and can be reached on Twitter @Pastapadre.