EA Sports, one of the biggest divisions of
Electronic Arts, has released big news about an upcoming feature included in their upcoming basketball game,
NBA Live 19. It will feature female character creation--which will be the first for its genre, with the only other major NBA/basketball genre competitor coming from
2K Sports' NBA 2K series. They have not gone into much detail about this new feature, other than that you can fully compete in all game modes with these female characters, as well as even use moves from current WNBA players, including superstar Candace Parker, as seen in the video below:
This isn't the first time in the sports genre that players could play as female characters though, as one of EA Sports' other premiere sports titles,
FIFA 18, offered players a chance last year to take a female character through story mode in their game. Similarly to last years version of
NBA Live, the 2017 edition (
NBA Live 18) integrated every single WNBA team into the game as well, offering up understanding that there are just as many female gamers that want representation in their game choices as well.
“After releasing the WNBA Play now feature in NBA Live 18 we saw a huge response, not only from media sites but the community,” said creative director Ryan Santos. “We have a lot of female ballers out there who love the sport, who watch the WNBA and NBA, and who hoop. It felt like once we established The One, we now have a really solid foundation for a way to play the game in a new career mode; it was the right time to create that feature with female create-a-player. Because we already had the infrastructure for the WNBA - we had the models, we had the animation, we had the hairstyles - it was a natural progression for us to build off."
NBA Live 19 features Philadelphia Sixers young star Joel Embiid as the cover athlete and will release on September 7, 2018 for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One.