Joystiq

In case you weren't aware, EA's Peter Moore likes sports. Probably the reason he's heading up EA Sports, eh? This E3 – his first since being put in charge of bringing in the mammoth publisher's sporting green – he obviously wanted to put his stamp on the brand, or, rather, his DNA.

EA Sports "Dynamic DNA," as it was explained during EA's pre-E3 press conference, is an intriguing new core gameplay gimmick for NBA Live 2009 that uses real players' analytic data (the type provided to sports scouts) to influence their actions (i.e. make them more realistic in-game). "You can't script sports," Moore pointed out – in theory, Dynamic DNA will enable the virtual players to adapt to on-court situations as they would in real life, making their actions far less predictable than in past b-ball titles.

The concept comprises "Player DNA," which is focused on making players act more realistically, and "Team DNA," which builds on individual data and gloms it all together to (you guessed it) more realistically recreate the team dynamic based on all players' DNA. The end result – at least the results we could see during a short Live 09 demo – is a much more visually believable looking game of hoops. Former NBA player and current color commentator Bill Walton was also on hand for the demo, and was impressed by what he saw. Sure he was being paid to be there, but what the hey?