NBA Live 08 demo up

By Robert Purchese Published 6 September, 2007

On Live, confusingly.

EA has bounced a new demo for NBA Live 08 onto the cheesy-smelling floor of Xbox Live.

It hits the scales at a trim 563MB, and will let you grow a few inches to see what EA has improved this year.

You might notice the better ball handling, for example, or enjoy the refined shooting and trick controls. But then there's always those new signature moves to pull off, or the better Live integration to try out - not to mention better looks and smarter physics.

It all sounds as though EA has learned from the rushed efforts it has produced for the last two years running, which have made it increasingly hard for us to recommend any but 2K's consistently well polished efforts.

Pop over to our NBA Live 07 review to see what needs to up its game.

NBA Live 08 is coming to 360, PS3, Wii, PS2 and PSP on 5th October. We'll let you know our thoughts closer to the time.

This demo isn't available in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Sweden.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Zomoniac #1 5 years ago

    Fiver says it looks worse than 06. Which still looks amazing. And WHERE'S THE FIFA DEMO???

  • Darren #2 5 years ago

    My guess is the game will look pretty... but only when it isn't moving as you can't see all the animation glitches and clipping. Bet it plays poorly too. I'd love to proven wrong but I think the Live series has been in decline for years now. In fact I'm so confident that NBA Live 08 will be average that I've already pre-ordered NBA 2K8 instead, which might not be as graphically impressive at first glance but always plays a far better game of b-ball.

  • SniperWolf #3 5 years ago

    [link url=http://i12.tinypic .com/4kyly76.jpg
    ]http://i12.tinypic .com/4kyly76.jpg
    [/link]

    as relevant to this topic as basketball is to sport.

  • sn3jk #4 5 years ago

    wtf not in sweden :(

  • paulf #5 5 years ago

    just had a quick go and this seems to be much better than last years episode. Animation is smooth and gameplay is much better with players having areas in which they will score more often than not (hotspots) to get the ball down low to tim duncan and he'll do a shake then drain an hookshot just like in real life

    @sniperWolf <a href = "http://www.j ohann-sandra.com/popular.htm">400 million might disagree with you</a> however they could fo course have made that figure up ;)

  • Darren #6 5 years ago

    I presume this another EA Sports game that runs at 60 fps this year on the Xbox 360 only.

  • Darren #7 5 years ago

    I'm having to eat my words... this is a vast improvement on last year's glitchy game, it runs at 60 fps and for the first time ever in an NBA Live game on the 360, the camera manages to keep up with the action! This makes a huge difference to the gameplay which is decent this year. I was rather surprised at how good this was actually so now I'm torn between getting this or NBA 2K8... maybe I'll just get both!

    P.S. I also tried the PS3 demo (from the US PS Store) and it's inferior graphically with little or no anti-aliasing and a 30 fps framerate which means the game doesn't flow as well as it does on the 360. I guess that's no surprise really judging by most other multiformat games on the PS3 (even Stranglehold looks slightly weaker with poorer AA and framerate "wobbles" in the cinematics). Makes me glad I own both machines really so I can choose although if I only owned a PS3 I probably wouldn't be aware or maybe even care really that the 360 versions were better.

  • Darren #8 4 years ago

    Scratch what I said about the NBA Live 08 demo, apparently according to Peter Moore (now at EA), the PS3 version DOES run at 60 fps but it didn't feel like it to me but if he says it does then so be it, I'm wrong! The AA is still noticeably poorer though.