Why can't this be? What am I missing?

[Gagnon39]

I used to be so big into NCAA Football. Back in the original XBox days (before you could upload/download rosters) I used to make NCAA Football rosters and copy them onto memory cards for people. I would get dozens a week. It was always so much fun in the summer months of my college years. However, those days are long gone and with it, NCAA Football entirely. I thought that my love affair with the game would last forever, sadly I was wrong. However, I just don't understand one simple thing.

I know that the game was killed because of the Ed O'Bannon deal and NCAA making money off of player likenesses. But why can't an NCAA Football game be made in which at the start of each dynasty players are completely randomly generated and therefore nothing like their real-life counterparts? Of course we would all want the ability to edit/upload/download rosters in which some people like my former self, would make real players. But I've just never understood why the game can't be made with the real schools, uniforms, logos, stadiums, etc. and just not the real players.

[beastmode2013]

Ea will probably never deal with NCAA ever again

So that really only leaves 2k as the potential dev to do it

Even then it's most likely just a lot more trouble than it's worth at this point.

[Gagnon39]

Quote: Originally Posted by beastmode2013

Ea will probably never deal with NCAA ever again So that really only leaves 2k as the potential dev to do it Even then it's most likely just a lot more trouble than it's worth at this point.

I just don't understand that. I would think it would sell exceptionally well, even with fictional/generated players.

[beastmode2013]

I think so too and I really think it all relies on the NCAA

Any dev knows or should know the market for college football especially when there hasn't been one for the "next-gen" consoles yet

[itsbigmike]

I don't know about "exceptionally well." It's reasonably popular but not at the level of Madden or NBA2K. It'd have to be at that level to be worth the legal trouble. Everyone in all of the threads we keep having about this same subject keep drastically underestimating how much the general football video gamer wasn't all the current rosters. You think Madden would still be successful if it didn't have the actual licenses in place for the NFL and NFLPA? Nah, it wouldn't. And when you factor in that the NFL has a much bigger fan base than college football -- a lot of the northeast don't care about college athletics that much -- the sales wouldn't be that great.

NCAA 14 also was down a little in sales IIRC from NCAA 13, meaning that even with all of the licenses for schools, the updated rosters, a better game engine, it still wasn't that good of a seller (though it was No. 1 on the charts, but nothing comes out in July that often, so it was usually uncontested as far as new game releases go).

Edit: Some quick googling revealed this. Madden 25 -- the same year of NCAA 14 -- sold 1 million copies in the first week, which was down from 1.65 million the year prior.

This site says that sales of NCAA on the PS3 were 190,190 for the first week and xbox 360 versions pulled in 244,531. That is a total of 434,721 for the first week. Roughly 43% of Madden.

That also doesn't include the fact that sales of NCAA 13 were down 12% from NCAA 12. I can't find the figure yet, but 14 was down from 13 as well. Some of this can be explained away by the games coming out towards the end of that console generation's life cycle, but it is also just a product that people were buying less and less.

Even if you give it a bump of like 25% from new consoles and the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" sentimentality, Madden sold 1.06 million units in the first week of release this year for the most recent version of the game. On new consoles. With a decently new gameplay. That's the worst Madden sales in the last 5-6 years. Assume a new version of NCAA's best case scenario is around 60-70% of Madden's sales, are 700,000 worth the hassle?

[Spartan Warrior]

A lot of the conferences and schools aren't willing to license their names to a video game right now. We're in a flux period and it's going to take some time for things to get sorted out.

You want a new video game? Root for the players to unionize. Then it will get done fast because they'll be able to collectively negotiate to license their images.