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NBA Live 07 to be PS3 launch title

EA confirms baller will be on shelf with PS3 day one; Dallas Mavericks win basketball championship in NBA Live simulation.

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In a seemingly innocuous press release from Electronic Arts today, the company announced some great news for b-ballin' PlayStation 3 fans. Touting an NBA Finals simulation on NBA Live, the publisher snuck in the fact that NBA Live 07 will be a launch title for Sony's next-gen system.

"NBA Live 07 will be available this fall on the Xbox 360 and Xbox video game systems, the PlayStation 2, PSP handheld system, and PC. It will also be one of the EA Sports titles available at launch of the PS3 entertainment system," says the statement.

The phrase "one of the EA Sports titles" indicates that the publisher is readying more sports games for the PS3 launch, which isn't surprising, as it helped the Xbox 360 launch with four EA Sports games--Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Madden NFL 06, FIFA 06: Road to the FIFA World Cup, and NBA Live 06. There's no word on what other EA games will be ready for the PS3's launch, though a version of Fight Night was demonstrated at Sony's E3 conference in 2005.

NBA Live 07 played a significant role in EA's portion of Sony's pre-E3 conference. A video showed off the game's new procedural awareness, foot planting, and responsiveness mechanics, and a demo showed gameplay being run in real time on simulated PS3 hardware.

EA also released the results of its NBA Live simulation of the NBA Finals, and Shaq-Fu won't be happy with the results. Though the real NBA Finals don't begin tomorrow, EA's basketball game predicts that the Dallas Mavericks will win the franchise's first title in seven games over the Miami Heat.

Dallas forward Dirk Nowitzki took home the sim's MVP of the series, averaging more than 25 points and 10 rebounds over the seven games. His greatest contribution came on an offensive rebound and dunk in the final seconds of the deciding game to put his team ahead 90-88.

Facing elimination, Miami stormed back from a three-games-to-one deficit to tie it at three apiece, before losing the final game. Heat center Shaquille O'Neal sparked a valiant game-six effort with 28 points and 11 rebounds, forcing a game seven.

EA did not specify which version of NBA Live was used in the sim, nor did it say what platform it was played on.

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