EA sits on the license, for yet another iteration of the series
~Overheard EA Sports executive on why they crank out the same uninspired sequel every year
As EA Sports walked away with fat sacks of cash from the exclusivity agreement with the National Football League, so did the possibility of them ever being challenged in regards to a licensed pigskin game over the next few years. Everyone was afraid (including myself) that EA Sports was going to sit on the license, cranking out a $50 roster update every season, and indeed they have for the last three seasons.
Unfortunately for college fans, the same treatment has been given to the NCAA Football games as well. Rather than take full advantage of the lone right to making the ultimate college football game, EA Sports decided to add, functionally speaking, approximately one actual new feature each year. Even worse in my mind, was adding the "momentum" feature in a previous iteration, NCAA 05 I believe, taking it out one year, and then trying to suddenly reintroduce it again like a new feature in 07. While I don't doubt that there are certainly some Madden and NCAA fans out there that will buy whatever game EA Sports puts out, even if its just a nude picture show of John Madden walking around his bus, EA should know better than to think that their consumer base has less than a 2-year memory.
Despite the constant raving about the "gorgeous next-gen graphics" and such, ESPN NFL 2K5 would still beat any Madden game out to this very day in terms of presentation; that is, making playing the game feel like a real interactive broadcast. It wasn't much to program, but the graphic overlays on screen and the picture and season stat bios that ran between plays in ESPN 2K5 really made it feel like you were watching a broadcast. And that's even with those annoying Sega announcers calling the game.
When I went out and forked over $500 of hard earned money for a PS3 and a copy of NCAA 08 a few short weeks ago, I expected far more than just an upgrade in graphics. I expected the lingering issues with defensive A.I., the shallow presentation, and the cheap habit of calling old features new to be resolved. If the XBOX-360 and PS3 are such powerful consoles, why can't EA improve the fundamental gameplay issues and beef up the presentation as well as overhauling the graphics?
Although I have hardly played through a single season in the campus legend mode, I already have a load of gripes with the game, including a number of carryovers from the old-gen consoles. How about an utterly unrealistic number of fumbles (I averaged one approximately every 20 carries, and that is covering up the ball almost every time I got hit)? Or selecting the "auto-name rosters" only to realize that it doesn't work at all? Who in quality control missed something as simple as making sure that selecting an item from a menu actually worked? I was elated to see a number of the I-AA teams make their way into the game over the last few years, only for them to be replaced by the old generic "I-AA West" teams I hadn't seen since the old PlayStation days. Since when can a company claim to put out an all-new revolutionary product, and then strip it down considerably when it had been making strides in the right direction?
Don't get me wrong, I think that generally speaking EA Sports makes a pretty good game, and I also realize that they work under the unrelenting time constraints of having to put a new game out every season, and then for different consoles that require different programming.
But how about instead of patting themselves on the back for repackaging essentially the exact same game with a roster update and one or two (in a good year) new game features, making all the little changes that would put the game over the top?
I suppose in EA's eyes, they would rather put out what in the PC world they call a "patch" each year, charge $50-60 for it, and sit on the license to the most popular sport in America. I am willing to bet that I am not the only person that has dozens upon dozens of great ideas to improve these games, but so long as EA has the exclusive right to make them, we all better brace ourselves for next year's gem, NCAA Roster Patch 09.