DLC and Sports Gaming: Thought from a Concerned Sports Gamer.

Sports gamers, when you first heard of DLC (Down Loadable Content), what were your initial impressions of it pertaining to sports games in general?? More teams, players uniforms, features, ect. DLC has brought us some of those things even the Madden team patched in a Broadcast cam for last years game being one of the highlights of DLC in this generation. My opinion is DLC has been everything to all games EXCEPT sports games. Some people say EA should use features not put in this year's game as DLC then get those features in next years games. I however disagree with this premise.

EA would not do anything like add features to THIS years game that will be in next year game because If they did that, then why would anyone bother buying next years game? Selling new features is a way to sell more units to and otherwise “updated” game. Besides how come they could not get it in the game at release?? That business model would p*ss a lot of gamers off to the point where they are just "whoring" features.

These games cost $60 A POP for new releases and that price is most likely gonna go up when the next generation of systems come out. Most Sports gamers feel like they pay enough for these games already and all this special stuff should be in the game in the first place...

Another big problem that's killing sports gaming and innovations in sports games is the XBOX!! If Microsoft had enough stones to stand by HD-DVD, sports games like The Show would probably be the norm in this generation.

I hear sports gamers in all forums say "Add more broadcast teams, add more classic stadiums, add more networks and all this and that". What gamers don't understand is this like that ADDS not only development time but you have to pay the talent for doing the lines and recording, ect. I mean you didn't think these guys are gonna say "OK I give you my voice and likeness so you can have a realistic game to play and I wont take NOTHING in return" knowing the company is gonna sell tons of units? Everyone has to get PAID. Its possible but you gonna start paying $100-$150 game that's being released YEARLY, are you gonna be OK with that???

What most sports gamers really want they just cant do that stuff with DVD storage.. sorry. Complex textures take up more memory, and you can only compress so much info that it will start to take a toll on performance.

Its not the 8 bit or 16 bit era anymore. A lot of these games cost major $$ to develop in the first place, thats why we are not seeing game companies taking any chances any more.
I remember back when EGM holiday issues were 300+ pages thick and brimming with hundreds of new games and a lot of them were sports games. Some were crap, some never made release, but it was cool and exciting to see whats coming next. Now, we have about 10 "for sure" releases.. and thats pretty much it. The "game" has changed indeed.

My fear is we wont see the games that Sports Gamers really want until the next cycle of systems UNLESS they become PS3 exclusives, and there are a lot of you that be p*ssed beyond belief if that happens. It all depends on what Microsoft sticks in their next box and remember, SONY is one of the founding members of the BLU RAY ASSOCIATION. Will Microsoft stick a BLU RAY drive in their next box knowing every unit they sell a portion of that money goes to one of their biggest competitors?? If not BLU RAY then what?? XBOX owners, If 2k said they would make the football game you always wanted but said they can only make it on the PS3, would you buy one JUST for that game??

I'm not trying to start any arguments or wars, just want to know what sports gamers think about these questions...

Just throwing some stuff out for some good discussion.. What do you guys think??