NCAA Football on Nintendo systems

[ck2024]

I just fired up my Wii for the first time in a while, and I decided to put in NCAA Football 09. I have been playing NCAA Football 13 and 14 on PlayStation 3, and I was shocked at how little depth 09 has. No Road to Glory, no Create-A-School, and a sorely lacking in-season recruiting system. 09 was also the only release in the series for Wii. It never showed up on the Wii U. I’m asking, why did EA not try to develop the series for Nintendo systems? It’s not just NCAA. Madden NFL had only one version on Wii U, and still has not shown up on the Switch. The NHL is also a no-show. The Switch FIFA port is apparently quite terrible, with EA putting embarrassingly little effort into it. This is all despite the fact that the Wii was the best selling seventh generation console, and the Switch has outsold XBox One despite releasing three years later. Now I get that Nintendo systems are not as powerful as PlayStation or XBox, and that Nintendo is not exactly easy to deal with. But the Wii discs are not that bad in terms of capacity (NCAA 14 would fit on a double sided disc), and the Wii offers truly unique motion controls. I mean, with some effort, Road to Glory could be insane with great motion controls, gameplay could be great fun, and proper death could of been added. But why did EA almost completely ignore Nintendo systems?

[Crazy Packers Fan]

My only guess is that Nintendo owners don't play sports games. Now, I do, but most don't. Nintendo aims for the Mario/Zelda crowd; the PS and Xbox aim at the hardcore crowd. It's a shame, because the NCAA Football games on the GameCube were brilliant. Madden NFL 07 on Wii was also a ton of fun to play with the motion controls. If you're reading, EA, throw us a bone. Just one Madden on Switch would be enough for me.

[ck2024]

That may be true, but they sold 100 million Wiis. They’ve sold north of 60 million Switches. There would have been enough players to support a release. I have a feeling that there has to be an extremely good reason why EA is leaving money on the table. Perhaps it’s Nintendo’s consistent use of nonstandard game media. That may give them a chance to have a different licensing agreement than Microsoft and Sony. Perhaps it’s the less powerful hardware. But I feel that unique gameplay is available with Nintendo Systems and that both EA and Nintendo are leaving money on the table. EA would get a potentially much larger user base from a larger user pool, Nintendo would give people another great game to buy on the Switch and provide people with a reason not to buy a PlayStation 5 or XBOX Series X. But the damage is being done. IGN literally refused to publish a review of FIFA 21 on Switch, claiming that nothing had changed.

[ndfan1993]

It is on the systems:

[Rondo is GOD]

Would be way cool to see someone jailbreak a switch and put ncaa on it. Pretty positive its not powerful enough for it though... :/

[sherrane]

"But why did EA almost completely ignore Nintendo systems?"


Playstation and XBox were more powerful machines with better graphics. EA's first college football game was Bill Walsh's College Football in 1993 and released for Super NES and Sega. They released version 2.0 a few years later.