The NBA 2K series is now massive- we have known this for a while now. But we haven’t known just how massive it is, with respect to its competition. You see, it is easy to forget this sometimes, but the NBA 2K games aren’t the only basketball games on the market- EA Sports also releases its middling NBA Live series. And if these market numbers are anything to go by, well, I am not sure why they bother, really.

According to an extrapolation of NPD sales numbers (via NeoGAf), NBA Live 2016 just sold 8,300 copies during its first month on the market in September- this is contrasted against NBA 2K16’s performance in the same month, which sold over a million copies, and became the highest selling game of the month, in a tracking period which included the launch of heavyweight major games such Destiny: The Taken King, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Super Mario Maker. Oh, and also? NBA 2K16 released midway through the tracking period.

At this point, it’s still not clear why EA is even persisting, though I guess their very existence keeps 2K Sports on their toes, so… that’s good, I guess.

As is per the course for Electronic Arts’ E3 conferences, it talked at length about its yearly sports titles which includes FIFA 16, NBA Live 16 and Madden NFL 16. Check out all of their trailers below if you happened to miss them when, say, the Twitch stream died near the end.

Perhaps the most stunning change comes by way of FIFA 16 which now sports Women’s National Teams that you can play as. Separate motion capture was done for female players and the actual in-game result is actually very well done. At some point afterwards, EA brought out football legend Pelé to speak at length about the game as well.

Check out the trailers for the respective release date of each title and let us know what you thought of the conference in the comments below. We’ll continue our E3 coverage today as Ubisoft and then eventually Sony arrive to reveal their upcoming releases. Stay tuned for more information in the meantime.

Basketball is the one area where the EA Sports label has completely faltered; whereas for other sports, the EA Sports brand is the de facto game that fans and the market gravitate to, for basketball, EA’s NBA Live franchise has long played second fiddle to 2K’s NBA 2K series, and completely failed to deliver on a compelling product.

On Twitter, EA promised that would not be the case this year, promising that ‘big changes’ are coming to this year’s NBA Live 16. ‘Big improvements [are] on the way!’ they said, before also noting that the game will be at E3 next month, and that fans should be able to see more of the title then.

NBA Live 16 should be out later this year; we can expect it to definitely hit PS4 and Xbox One, though of course, it will also probably come at least to Xbox 360 and PS3 as well. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more updates.