The football season is in full swing now, but that doesn't mean there isn't another sport waiting in the wings, ready to invade coliseums and hit television all over the country relatively soon – we're talking about NBA basketball. Though basketball is a little ways off, the videogames are just hitting the market, and we were fortunate enough to get to participate in a conference call with some people involved in this year's NBA 2K8 (Rob Jones - Gameplay Project Manager, 2K Sports; Mike Wang - Lead Gameplay Designer, 2K Sports; and Erick Boenisch - Lead Features Designer, 2K Sports) to see why just what is going to set this year's game apart from the competition, and why NBA 2K8 is going to be the basketball game of choice.

When it comes to sports games many people simply want to say that this year's installment is nothing more than the same game as last year, but with a new roster update. Oftentimes that may seem true with some games, but the NBA 2K8 team really wants to make sure that they just don't sit back and become content with their product and are always pushing themselves to add and change things, constantly tweaking the formula to make the NBA 2K games as popular and perfect as they can be. Rob Jones told us: "With NBA 2K8 the biggest thing for us is we feel we really nailed something with NBA 2K7 last year and wanted to continue that momentum, so we tried to pinpoint where we really needed to step-up our game. We felt that we had done a really good job on gameplay and wanted to continue our momentum there, but looking at our competition and a lot of things we've done, we saw that we really needed to start pushing our graphics more and gain that lead we had coming off the Dreamcast and PS2 and Xbox, as well as try and beef up our external features so that we answered the call of those people who have been asking for things like our new slam dunk mode and improved association mode and franchise features. So it was pretty much trying to get back to make the game players are already clamoring for better by adding in the areas where we felt we were lacking. We're big gamers over here already anyways, and most of us you'll find online playing against you when we're off work, so we already knew where we were short and it was a matter of scoring that up and trying to build on and increase that lead in terms of what people feel and recognize our game to be the top and best in NBA basketball games today."

Last year, when comparing the NBA 2K7 versions between the Xbox 360 version and the PS3 one, there were quite a few changes in comparison since the PS3 version came several months after the 360 version. This year, however, things are very much going to be same regardless of which version you buy. Erick Boenisch told us: "Last year we had a fair amount of differences in the versions mostly because the PS3 didn't come out till November, so we had a little time after we finished the 360 to tighten things up and with the architecture of the PS3 we were able to get some features in. This year I'm proud to say the versions are pretty much 99 – 100% identical with the main differences being the support of the SIXAXIS controller functionality."

As the team was quick to point out, one of the biggest additions is the slam dunk contest, which is finally making its long awaited premiere in the NBA 2K franchise. The fan favorite mode from the All-Star weekend celebration has been transferred to the NBA 2K franchise, but don't expect just your typical slam dunk All-Star weekend competition. Rob Jones shared with us what to expect with NBA 2K8's slam dunk contest and some of the other new features: "Obviously the addition of the slam dunk contest is one of the big things. It's a casual feature in terms of how it draws in people who might otherwise not be interested in simulation basketball, but it was one of the features we wanted to add in to kind of draw in the more casual players. That said, we also spent some time trying to streamline our gameplay so that it was a bit more accessible, because last year we had a couple of moves where you had to hold in a couple of triggers, and it's great if you're an advanced guy, but if you just wanted to pickup and play not being able to do the cool stuff kind of turns you off most games. So we tried to go back and really address that and make it easier on a first time customer to us.

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