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5 Things We Learned From Our Hands-On Time With NBA Live 18

There's no sports game franchise more maligned by the sports gaming community than EA’s NBA Live. After leaving the scene in 2010 and taking four years off, the series unceremoniously made its return at the beginning of this console generation with a pair of lackluster releases before once again going on hiatus.

WNBA Players And Teams

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Coming back after a year off, EA desperately needed to do something new to separate itself from its competition. Adding in a full slate of WNBA players and teams into NBA Live is clearly their solution and kudos to them for doing it.

After FIFA’s integration of women’s national teams in 2015, the onus was on the rest of the sports game world to see who would step up to include women in their game. The WNBA is the biggest women’s leagues in all four-major North American sports, so its inclusion in a video game series was something that had been lacking for a number of years and it’s great that EA and NBA Live decided that they were up for the task.

While I never went hands on with the women’s teams, their inclusion is enough to warrant comment, if simply because their presence will undoubtedly be a factor in expanding the game’s influence and help set NBA Live apart from what its competition has to offer.