Why was NBA Elite 11 cancelled? It was a bad game. No, really. Speaking to IGN, EA executive Andrew Wilson went on record about the eventual scrapping of the first game in the annual series, citing "ultimately, it was just going to be a bad game" as the reason it didn't hit store shelves. 

NBA Elite 11 was a reboot for the beleaguered NBA Live franchise, which has been losing fans to NBA 2K for years. In the initial press materials, EA said Elite 11 would "usher in the future of basketball games" with skill-based shooting mechanics and 1:1 motion, all of which would be mapped to the right-stick. But things didn't work out and EA is being pretty up front about it.

"We knew the goal was aggressive," Wilson told IGN," But at the same time, we believed it was an important enough goal for the gamer, who'd been playing basketball games in a very similar way for a very long time." Noble enough.
 

Why was NBA Elite 11 cancelled? It was a bad game. No, really. Speaking to IGN, EA executive Andrew Wilson went on record about the eventual scrapping of the first game in the annual series, citing "ultimately, it was just going to be a bad game" as the reason it didn't hit store shelves. 

NBA Elite 11 was a reboot for the beleaguered NBA Live franchise, which has been losing fans to NBA 2K for years. In the initial press materials, EA said Elite 11 would "usher in the future of basketball games" with skill-based shooting mechanics and 1:1 motion, all of which would be mapped to the right-stick. But things didn't work out and EA is being pretty up front about it.

"We knew the goal was aggressive," Wilson told IGN," But at the same time, we believed it was an important enough goal for the gamer, who'd been playing basketball games in a very similar way for a very long time." Noble enough.
 

What a shame! :/ 

Well that's honesty I guess...

Blurst
 
Edit: Butt Monkeys

Well, good thing they scrapped it then

it looked bad

Damn I wish I had played the demo, its not often a game gets pulled for sucking too bad this late in the game. (The pun was a happy accident)

At least they admit it. Releasing the game in a broken state would have been a total dick move to the fans. 

damn just missed it!!!! sum bitch!

I think its good that they scrapped it. Although it was a pity all that manhours are wasted, at least nobody will have to play a mediocre game and hate the developers for it.

I never expected it to be cancelled, but I did expect it to suck. Live has been shit for years, a name change wasn't going to change that. I played the demo; it felt like Live, but with pass mapped to the right trigger.

It's refreshing to see EA be so honest instead of trying to spin it.

" 
Tiburon is the studio responsible for the often-lauded Madden and Tiger Woods franchises, both of which typically see huge improvements year-to-year.   "

 What I'm most curious about is why the decision to pull the plug was done so late in the process (going through certification and manufacturing). They had every opportunity to cut their losses earlier in the development process, and it would have saved a lot of money. Not to mention probably saving face if it had meant the infamous Elite demo never getting out.

" @Brad said:

" 
Tiburon is the studio responsible for the often-lauded Madden and Tiger Woods franchises, both of which typically see huge improvements year-to-year.   "

You're joking...right?  Huge improvements?  Are we playing the same games? "

I remember when Madden NFL 96 was canceled for the PlayStation. Tiburon got the series back then too. Visual Concepts screwed up. Funny how things change.
 
Here's an article I found about the Madden NFL history. "Here"  
 
And a quote from the article about the canceled game. 
 
 

1995

Considering how great 2k11 turned out, does anyone even care?

" @Brad said:

" 
Tiburon is the studio responsible for the often-lauded Madden and Tiger Woods franchises, both of which typically see huge improvements year-to-year.   "

You're joking...right?  Huge improvements?  Are we playing the same games? "

when has that ever stopped them before?

What a dayum shame...

"...both of which typically see huge improvements year-to-year."  
Lolwut? Oh wait, I forgot about hand towels. Nevermind.

NBA Elite 11 was so incredibly bad that it would have permanently impacted EA's ability to ever release another Basketball game.  Everyone everywhere would think about how awful 11 was before buying another EA basketball game.  Them pulling the plug was the right move.  The unfortunate part is that they didn't realize this until mere weeks before the release date.

What I don't understand is how is this a bad game when they worked on the previous NBA game for EA. Wouldn't it have been pretty much the same as last year but with some updates? More of a game development issue for me as I'm not a fan of basketball. Just curious how an annual sports game can go to a trashed state so fast.

 For some reason, I didn't really even mind the demo.  
 I played it without knowing it had created a shit-storm on the internet.. and didn't think it was too bad.  
 I do wish I still had the demo, to re-assess my brief evaluation though. 

all i gotta say is if the game was bad enuff for EA to call it 'a bad game' then it must have been fucked.
 
seriously though why did they leave it so late to pull the plug....the mind boggles!

my guess is EA was planning to release this as "a bad game" and wait till next year to add in all of the polish and improvements.
 
but then that Youtube video came out and gave them bad press and they figured that the game wouldn't sell any copies, so they cut their losses and just shifted focus to next year's game.

it is a good thing

Everything about this is so weird... maybe this is just a huge publicity stunt to hype up NBA 2012, I wonder how many people will buy 2012 to see what 2011 became.

This thing looks like an entirely huge lack of oversight, which is weird considering the company.

What a shocker, a game franchise that is released early with little to no new features and charged full price is bad.

" What a shocker, a game franchise that is released early with little to no new features and charged full price is bad. "

" @onarum said:

" What a shocker, a game franchise that is released early with little to no new features and charged full price is bad. "

Don't be bitter, video game article comment poster. *hug* There, there. Kudos to EA for protecting the franchise even though this means they'll lose even more ground to the competition.  "

Although company's have released games that were "bad" before, it's nice to see EA actually take a loss trying to make a game better. I played the demo and it was far from good, but the game had some nice features, including the new control scheme which I loved. Hopefully with this delay and the fact that the NBA series is going to be developed by EA Tiburon the franchise will improve.

Disappointing to hear, but if the game was not up to snuff I applaud them for not releasing it.  It's not often now a days that a company will pull the plug after investing so much money into a product.

So can we take this as a lesson learned from EA?

I disagree with the assertion that Woods and Madden get "huge improvements year-to-year". Tiger has minimal annual updates, especially given there's only so much you can do with a golf game; and the biggest criticism from Madden diehards is the minimal update every year which normally amounts to a few gimmicky features and tweaks to the overall gameplay.