EA Sports moves up NBA Live 2003

Shortly after Sega 2882102confirmed that NBA 2K3 would ship on October 8, EA Sports announced that the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube versions of NBA Live 2003 will also ship on October 8, one week earlier than planned. The PlayStation version of the game will ship October 15, and the PC version is scheduled for November 12. The NBA season will start at the end of October.

Analysts expected that Sega's earlier ship date could give NBA 2K3 a slight sales edge over EA Sport's NBA game. Revenue from sports games is important to both Sega's and EA's business, and last week EA 2881604announced that in August Madden NFL 2003 had outsold NFL 2K3 by a significant margin. Typically, football game sales are roughly twice that of basketball game sales, but Sega has expressed hopes that, in terms of sales, NBA 2K3 will help the company close the competitive distance with EA.

For more details on NBA Live 2003, check out our previous coverage of the games.