When EA announced that the long-dormant NBA Jam franchise would be making its return to modern game consoles, it came as a surprise that the spiritual successor would be a Wii-exclusive release. After all, EA is hardly in the business of releasing games on a single platform, and nothing about NBA Jam's acrade style seemed like it wouldn't be a good fit for other platforms. It's not like NBA Jam is a bad fit for the Wii either... but why only the Wii?
== TEASER ==Well, if Germany's government rating board, the USK, is to be believed, the reason EA is calling NBA Jam a Wii-exclusive is because they can't talk about other versions of the game yet. You guessed it, folks: The USK has rated versions of NBA Jam for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
Until EA comes out and properly announces these additional platforms, we don't have an official confirmation of the releases, but we can still ask the question: Why have these versions of NBA Jam been rated by the USK? Occam's Razor says that NBA Jam's exclusivity is timed, and that after some amount of time has passed, EA will properly announce these additional versions of the game after the game is released this Fall.
The USK isn't usually wrong with its (numerous) game reveals over the years (after all, they're the country's rating board; they're not in the position to be making game titles up), but it's still potentially a mistake. Joystiq did a little digging on the story and found that the PS3 and 360 versions of NBA Jam were the only versions of the game the board has rated. It's possible that the Wii version of NBA Jam may not come to Europe at all, and that residents of the old country will only be getting the game for the HD consoles. Of course, if EA has done the work to make the game for the other plattforms, they would release on those platforms everywhere they could... so it would come to North American PS3s and 360s down the line anyway.
Regardless of this announcement, I had a pretty good hunch that EA was planning on bringing NBA Jam to the other consoles eventually. After all... it's EA. That what a publisher do. We'll see how it all plays out--on fire, no doubt--when the game launches this Fall.