It's a shame the lawyers can't get this figured out

[cusefan74]

Quote: Originally Posted by WeWereGiants

I wonder if the cost of paying the players would be outweighed by any potential added profit from the fact that the game would ship with real rosters, faces, etc.

I don't think real rosters would make a difference.

[dxdude2004]

I don't like this whole "Power 5" nonsense, especially with how teams in the Big Ten are performing (I should know, lol).

What if I'm a great player, highly recruited, but I want to go to Northern Illinois? Or what if I want to go to an FCS school, say, NORTH DAKOTA STATE (back-to-back-to-back(?) national champions)??? I just don't understand, lol.

[blazer003]

The NCAA decided not to re-up with EA, but if EA could broker a deal, there's no reason why they couldn't ship a game with completely generic players and numbers, that just have ratings that might approximate the general skills of the real player (or even not). They could keep in roster share, I believe legally they aren't responsible for what the end user does with the game, and we can download the rosters. The only downside is that playing online would be with generic rosters. But that's all just speculation on my part. It could be more complicated.

[billysims]

Quote: Originally Posted by fballturkey

Some money is better than no money, so if it all shakes out that they can pay for players likeness they probably will come to some agreement with whoever the players license their image out to. It won't be a ton of money and might hardly be any, but like I said, some is better than none.

Unfortunately for us, it doesn't really work that way though. EA is a publicly held company, and stockholders buy invest based on a number of factors, chief among them profitability. If they sell alot of products (and this game probably represents a significant % of their previous sales) at a lower margin, it inevitably eats into their profitability and affects shareholder value, stock price, etc. As much as we don't want to hear it as consumers, any public company ultimately is driven to deliver shareholder value first and foremost.