Does anybody wish...

[Cusefan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Kaiser Wilhelm

Obviously the sales would not be there. But I would wager a pretty penny that the time and money put inot the game is somewhere between 50%-70% of the actual sales. Now to say the money they make is the reason for the technological improvements is ill-founded with a company as large as Electronic Arts. If they did something like this the game would most likely play better, look better, have more in-depth features that are not broken (like Dynasty and RTG) our of the box. Again they would lose money compared to a every year product release, even though it is at the expense of quality.

If your a EA stockholder, do you really care about quality if the money is not there?

[canes21]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cusefan

If your an EA stockholder, do you really care about quality if the money is not there?

As a stockholder myself, quality over money. Guess thats why I lost my cars and house though.

[Thinking Out Loud]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tigger_Woods

EA would come out with a game every other year. They could give roster updates every season for the existing game, they could even charge us for it. This way the game would actually have dramatic improvements instead of a rushed product with many bugs.

I feel where the OP and others are coming from but those on the other side have valid points, as well. So it seems the best thing would be for EA to figure out a way to have both a multi-year development cycle and a yearly release. The closest thing we could get to the this would probably be if they added some sort of developer team that could work on features for future games even during the current games development cycle.

THAT"S WHAT EA SAYS THEY ARE NOW DOING:

"Another key factor in the development of our annual sports franchises is that we compete with other games in the industry that are often in development over much longer cycles, in many cases spanning 2-3 years. If we build our games one year at a time, it becomes very difficult to deliver fundamental innovation in our technology because many of the core innovations take multiple years to develop before they are ready to be rolled into our games. What we have done within our football group is we have an Advance Team that is dedicated to working on the technology and feature innovations of the future. This is an additional investment that does not take away from our ability to deliver our games this year."

[Palo20]

I want a game every year.

[JerseySuave4]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cusefan

lol ok, just buy the game every other year then? These Developers at Tiburon work insane hours and only get a couple weeks off when the game releases to work on the next one so you cant use the "more time is needed" excuse. Buy the game every other year instead of being selfish and saying it should be released every other year. I personally get sick of a game(regardless of quality) after about 6 months so waiting another 18 months to get my fix is out of the question.

you clearly are missing the point. As others have explained they would have more time to work on the game so the improvements to the game would be significantly better. If you have 10 months to work on a new game or 22 months to work on a new game, you're going to see more significant improvements in the 22 months.

Quote: Originally Posted by da ThRONe

Actually it is the exact samething. If you want huge leaps to fell better about how you spend your money. Play NCAA 10 than play NCAA 12 and tell me it's not the same. Hell the difference between 10 and 11 was huge.

actually its not even close to the same thing. Sure the difference between NCAA 10 and NCAA 12 was huge but the fact that they had to get a game out in between those 2 limits the improvements they make. Imagine the improvement from NCAA 10 to NCAA 12 if they had those 2 years to work on new features and improvements.

Quote: Originally Posted by Charleston_Tiger

Its not because they wouldnt be wasting resources (time and money) on as much stuff this time of the year getting ready for a launch. They would be putting those resources into working on the game. It is definitely not the same thing. Its not even close to being the same thing. They would have more time to add BIGGER things to the game such as a new engine if they wanted. Right now they cant do that due ot time constraints. That is why we will never see Euphoria or an Equivalent in NCAA until the next gen of consoles. They dont have time when releasing a new game every year. All they have time for is little tweaks to their existing(outdated) game engine.

Quote: Originally Posted by canes21

It isn't the same thing for many reasons. For starters, if they had 2 years to develop a game they would think about putting in bigger features. They would have more time to work on just one game so they wouldn't have to try and only work on things that they can for sure get in in a one year cycle. We would be able to see bigger changes to the engine and coding. Also, every year the game comes out, there is around a month of time where the game doesn't change much because they are just polishing it up and letting it get gold and getting ready to distribute it to all retailers. So, that is at least one months worth of time if not more per year. So in two yearly cycles that is at least two months worth of time they really don't work on the game that much. In a two year cycle they would be able to work on the game for a solid 22+ months if not 23 straight getting what they want in. As of now they get around around 10 months to plan out and work on everything. If you think getting 18-20 months of time to work on two games would give you the same results as working on one for 23 straight months, then I don't feel like I could, or anyone could, ever convince you why this is completely different.

BINGO! At least 2 people understand. And we're not saying this is going to happen because we all know its about making money so we're not going to see this happen. We're just saying if games took a year off in between the improvements would be much more significant.

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cusefan

If your a EA stockholder, do you really care about quality if the money is not there?

Depends if I'm a gamer or not. EA stock is pretty cheap and has gone down hill over the past month and a half or so.

Not to mention EA has monopoly power in this particular market so, I feel this small area would not have a critical impact on EA's overall stock price.

My whole arguement is that a game that is in production longer will be better on release(I'm sure somebody will try to go find examples that are exceptions). Hence we see games like Gran Turismo 5 which maxxed out the PS3 gaming system.

[CM Hooe]

1 ) EA will never change the development schedule to an every-other-year thing. The only possible exception I see is if the game becomes subscription-based.

2 ) I do not understand why you can't make a decision yourself to not buy the game if you don't think one cycle of improvements is worth the $60 entry price. EA is not putting a gun to your head every July when the yearly iteration drops, and it isn't their responsibility to make consumer decisions for you. They are ultimately in the business to make money, and for the most part their football games on this yearly release cycle wildly succeed to this end.

As to whether it'd make a difference in the long run with regard to quality, maybe, but maybe not. I'm of the belief that these games are constantly in development, and that new feature prototypes are being worked on behind the scenes by small cross-sections of the total development team that we never know about until they make it into the game fully-fleshed-out one or two years later. I don't believe that the development cycles of these game are discrete time lines, i.e. I think EA is already working on next year's tech for NCAA and Madden, and has been for some time.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Thinking Out Loud

THAT"S WHAT EA SAYS THEY ARE NOW DOING: "Another key factor in the development of our annual sports franchises is that we compete with other games in the industry that are often in development over much longer cycles, in many cases spanning 2-3 years. If we build our games one year at a time, it becomes very difficult to deliver fundamental innovation in our technology because many of the core innovations take multiple years to develop before they are ready to be rolled into our games. What we have done within our football group is we have an Advance Team that is dedicated to working on the technology and feature innovations of the future. This is an additional investment that does not take away from our ability to deliver our games this year."

Where's this from, again? I assume one of the blogs, but a link would be spiffy. This is exactly what I thought they were doing.