The first step to improvement is knowing where you fell short. NBA Live 10 (Xbox 360, PS3, PSP) producer Sean O'Brien did just that in his EA Sports blog post, humbly admitting that NBA Live does need improvements to catch up to the superior 2K Sports franchise. In addition, the Electronic Arts exec promises that such improvements will be made and that NBA Live 10 will mark the the franchise's comeback.

With two months of development still to go, O'Brien notes that Live 10 is already playing better than Live 09, although I could argue that that really isn't saying much if they want to keep up with 2K Sports. According to O'Brien, revamped controls will completely change the way we play the game, noting that this is not "marketing speak."

Additionally, there will be two features to be implemented to create more realism to Live 10: Synergy Sports and Dynamic DNA. Making use of detailed research data from Synergy Sports, EA will be able to update player attributes, trends, and other variable across the entire season. Some variables would translate into the game as Daily DNA, which will update player attributes as the season goes on.

Interesting features, I must say. But the main NBA Live deal-breaker for me was the gameplay, and unless they fix that, no feature can save the game. We'll have another control revamp again as well, but let's hope for EA's sake that it really does improve gameplay.

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• Dwight Howard headlines NBA Live 10 debut teaser video