NFL Head Coach 09

[GisherJohn24]

Quote: Originally Posted by JayhawkerStL

Head Coach did not sell well. They are not going to going to migrate the franchise mode from a game that even sim players were not pleased with enough to buy. Head Coach is why we are where we are.

it still had excellent ideas.

[JayhawkerStL]

Quote: Originally Posted by GisherJohn24

it still had excellent ideas.

Just not profitable ones. By the time HC failed, it had been a decade since Sierra scrapped their line of sports sims. Head Coach was just further evidence that sim sports gaming was dead on a AAA level.

[canes21]

Quote: Originally Posted by JayhawkerStL

Just not profitable ones. By the time HC failed, it had been a decade since Sierra scrapped their line of sports sims. Head Coach was just further evidence that sim sports gaming was dead on a AAA level.

The sales of head coach had more to do with it competing with Madden and not having on the field gameplay and had less to do with the in-depth features it included. NBA 2k has basically taken HC09's franchise features and put them in their game and has been outselling Madden with ease. An NBA game outselling an NFL game despite the huge popularity difference between the two.

[edgevoice]

A build of a "playable" version of Head Coach would be a dream as a franchise mode player. No back of the box gimmicks needed here. I would pay top dollar for a true hard-core NFL gaming experience like this and would happily pay for a simple downloadable yearly roster update, playbook additions and running improvements to gameplay. However, it would cost EA a fortune and a couple of years to initially pull this off. Just not going to happen since EA's focus is clearly going to remain on MUT, as it's their biggest and constant cash cow. That's simply smart business by them. It's also less investment on their part.

As I see it, the biggest problem that rarely gets spoken about and addressed by EA is the rather poor CPU AI strategizing, playcalling and clock management. With online head to head play, there is no need for EA to spend resources on fixing this. Again, smart business for them. Franchise vs. cpu players like me are dinosaurs and it's been made pretty clear we have not been made a priority since Madden 12. It is what it is. All one can do is make the best of it and accept the state of the game for what it is or move on.

[ODogg]

Lol I just want the CPU qbs to scramble


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

[XtremeDunkz]

Quote: Originally Posted by JayhawkerStL

Just not profitable ones. By the time HC failed, it had been a decade since Sierra scrapped their line of sports sims. Head Coach was just further evidence that sim sports gaming was dead on a AAA level.

This is a bad take. The game would still be played widely today if it included actual gameplay. The reason it didnt sell was because there arent many coaching sim fans on consoles.

[jerwoods]

Quote: Originally Posted by XtremeDunkz

This is a bad take. The game would still be played widely today if it included actual gameplay. The reason it didnt sell was because there arent many coaching sim fans on consoles.

the 1 dealbraker on that game after about 60-90 min of playtime the game would start freezing up and then stop playing

[ijumpedthegun]

Quote: Originally Posted by XtremeDunkz

This is a bad take. The game would still be played widely today if it included actual gameplay. The reason it didnt sell was because there arent many coaching sim fans on consoles.

I agree--not a take that's grounded in what's going on in sports games. I loved Head Coach but it had some serious flaws. Bugs that would crash the game, the "if you go into create a play mode your injured players stay injured for life" bug, unbalanced system where a running offense was useless (at a time in the NFL where a lot of teams were running the ball a lot). There were also some serious menu deficiencies (no way for your coach to change his scheme or base playbook, even in the offseason, no way to know which coaches were hireable and having to bid on them one at a time, etc).

Also, look at NBA2k and MLB the Show. Those two games sell pretty well given how popular those sports are compared to football and they both have deep franchise modes that are a major draw for consumers.

NFL Head Coach failed for a lot of reasons, and one of them might be because fans don't want to pay $60 for a front office sim that doesn't include gameplay. It didn't fail because sim sports is dead and draws no interest from consumers.