Hey all! I’m P.J. Snavely, senior producer for SCEA here in sunny San Diego. For everybody that read my last post on High Velocity Bowling and left comments, thank you very much. I’m looking forward to the release of that title in the next few weeks. I also share time on another project that’s been my baby since its inception and that’s NBA ’08 on PSP.

NBA ’08 for the PSP is our fourth iteration of basketball on the handheld platform. Over the past three versions, we’ve always tried to be on the leading edge of combining simulation NBA basketball with some new and innovative ideas in the genre – things that would be fun and different to play. Personally, I find it very frustrating when developers bring an identical version of a sports game to the PSP, so we’ve gone out of our way to ensure that NBA ’08 is significantly different than its PS2/PS3 brethren.

Along those lines, we came up with a concept for a “Basketball meets Risk” type of game mode that we call Conquest. In Conquest, you pick an NBA team and then try to “capture” other NBA cities by playing them head-to-head. If you win, you take over that city and all of its players. Should you lose, the defending city has the option to steal one of your players. We’ve also thrown in little gameplay twists, like if you occupy all five teams within a division, you can unlock a historic player who will come out of retirement and play for you. It’s a great combination of planning and “strategery” and (imho) a better gameplay experience than a typical Franchise mode.

Hope you enjoy the game – it hits shelves Tuesday, October 2nd!

On Friday, Amare Stoudemire came to our San Diego motion capture studio to perform, conduct some interviews and be photographed and filmed. Decked out in a black and blue mo-cap suit fitted with numerous sensors he shot jumpers, went through his free throw routine and then he unleashed some sweet dunks. This man can dunk with power and authority! It’s one thing to watch him tear it up on TV, but in person, close up, his athleticism and speed are really amazing.

A pack of journalists followed his every move using still cameras and movie cameras with lights illuminating everything in their path to an incredible degree. In fact they were so close during his high-flying dunks I was a bit concerned – for Amare, not the camera carriers.

After throwing down a particularly nasty windmill dunk Amare was ready for a bite to eat. He asked for a blueberry muffin and some water. About 3 seconds elapsed before he had the requested snack in front of him. Now here is where I couldn’t hold in the laughter. You’d think the journalists would turn off the cameras and wait for him to grab a bite and then turn the cameras back on. No way. They continued to film him as he took a bite off his blueberry muffin and had a sip of water. I suppose it’s all in a day’s work for an NBA star but it would unnerve me to be filmed while trying to have a quick bite. Not Amare. Didn’t faze him in the slightest. He was good-natured exuding a sense of humor throughout the entire session. Not only is he an amazing baller, he’s a great guy too.

With the mo-cap session concluded, he changed out of the mo-cap suit into a Suns uniform and the two of us sat down to play a game. It was Amare and myself playing NBA 08. Very cool. Amare suggested the loser of our game had to drop and perform 10 push-ups. I agreed and it was game time. He took the Suns and I selected Seattle. During the 5-minute quarter we traded baskets pretty evenly. You can tell he’s done this before, as he has some video basketball skills in his arsenal too! There was some light-hearted trash talk during our game but when the quarter came to an end, the Sonics had a 1 point lead. He was then whisked off for interviews as I basked in the glory of my 1 quarter victory. Since the game was never played to its conclusion we’ll never know who would have had to pay off the 10 push-ups challenge, but I like to think I’d be the one counting while he did the work.

If you’d like to check out some previews of NBA 08 for the PS3 hit: Gametap.com or IGN.com: IGN.com.