EA left it going for several years for a handful of dedicated superfans, but NBA Live 19's servers officially shut down on January 30. The game is also no longer available through EA Play. I am old to enough remember multiple pro basketball games vying for our attention and hard-earned dollars, but those days are long gone.
NBA 2K's dominance and EA's inability to put out a decent basketball product were a one-two punch that handed 2K Sports a monopoly they have never relinquished. It all began falling apart after EA, already badly losing in this rivalry, rebranded NBA Live as NBA Elite. That name proved a true when a demo revealed series glitches in the game. The most infamous one saw Lakers center Andrew Bynum suddenly freeze in place at midcourt. It would come to be known as 'the Jesus glitch."
Yet another glitch gave Luol Deng a hotspot from which he was suddenly the best shooter in NBA history. Nothing EA did to right this ship worked, including hiring NBA 2K Gameplay Director Mike Wang. He told IGN he hoped he could get NBA Live back on its feet and revitalize the rivalry between the two. Sadly, that never happened, and NBA 2K has continued unchallenged.
EA's misfortunes have apparently kept them out of the college basketball market as well. EA planned to make a college b-ball si, but everybody they talked to was already working with 2K Sports. After the embarrassing development, EA had to retreat and announced that its college basketball game was no longer feasible.
Looking at it honestly, NBA Live 19 was no juggernaut. Its Metacritic stands at 73 percent, which was never going to keep it profitable while NBA 2K exists. But it was a reminder of a time in which we had real competition in this and other sports gaming spaces. Those days are gone, and it's hard to see how they ever come back.