It's official-official: NBA Jam is coming to the Xbox 360 and PS3, but there are a couple of catches. First, you'll have be the proud owner of NBA Elite 11 in order to play it. Second, it's not the full version that is hitting the Wii this October.
EA has announced this morning that NBA Jam, presented in HD, will be a pack-in with fresh copies of Elite 11, the publishers' promising reboot of the NBA Live franchise. NBA Jam for Xbox 360 and PS3 will be a downloadable on the console's specific services. A download voucher, as you might suspect, is what will come with copies of Elite 11.
EA is saying at the moment that this version of Jam won't be sold over PSN and Xbox Live Marketplace. The only way to get this HD version is to pay the full price--around 60 bones--for Elite 11, which hits on October 5. (Or wait until EA starts charging for it on XBLM or PSN separately.)
This version of NBA Jam won't have all the features of its once-Wii-exclusive brother. It's hitting digital download services with Play Now, Classic Campaign, and Online modes of play, the notable omission being the Remix Tour mode, which includes Jam battles against NBA greats like Dennis Rodman or Magic Johnson. I'll note, though, that Classic Campaign will offer a similar tiered ladder-style mode that Jam fans should be familiar with. And It's still unknown at the moment if the Wii version of the game will support online play, so that might be an exclusive feature for this version of the game.
How much will you pay for a downloadable or a scaled back version of a game? Ask a Halo fan if that Crackdown $60 disc was worth the coin. That might help with the decision if you're on the fence--provided that EA doesn't offer NBA Jam HD on XBLM or PSN at some point in the future. Exclusivity is a funny thing.
220 Comments