The countdown to both NBA Live 21 and the Xbox Series X is on.
Microsoft’s new console was initially scheduled for release during “holiday 2020”. Whilst we don’t know exactly when that is, the belief is that it is sometime from October to November, in time for the Christmas rush.
There has been no official confirmation as of yet, with it believed that the Xbox Series X is still on course for it’s planned release. If the virus continues into the summer, then don’t be surprised to see the release date pushed back to early 2021.
We know all about the specs and we’ve looked at the controller, but what do the updated specifications mean for EA in their attempt to make moves in the basketball gaming world once again?
Xbox Series X Specs
Earlier this month Microsoft announced a lot of information about the specifications for the Xbox Series X and it is good news for you Xbox fans.
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Unsurprisingly, the Series X will be Microsofts most powerful console ever, being powered by a custom-designed processor leveraging AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures.
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With DirectX Raytracing - a first for any console - you can expect more dynamic and realistic environments than ever before.
The Xbox Series X will support up to 120 fps - four times that of the Xbox One S - meaning that games will look better than ever, in record time.
What does Xbox Series X mean for NBA Live 21?
There’s still no concrete release date for NBA Live 21, but with the NBA season due to start in October we’d bank on a September release.
This means that NBA Live 21 will initially drop before the next-gen consoles, however with NBA 2K leaps and bounds ahead at the minute, we anticipate gamers will be happy to wait for the next-gen consoles to land.
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This is a real opportunity for NBA Live to get back into the game, with the DirectX Raytracing playing a key role in making the visuals - from players to courts and everything in between - look better than ever.
The new quick resume feature - which allows gamers to continue multiplayer games from a suspended state almost instantly - will play kindly into the hands of those playing locally on the same console.
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The long term future of NBA Live rests solely on this release, EA simply have to invest time into this game to get it back on a competitive level with NBA 2K. If they do that, given the capabilities that this console has, it could mean big things.
NBA Live 21 has the potential to be the best looking, most ambitious NBA game ever, but EA have to get it right.
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