Competition Creates Better Games is Baloney

[tabulaRasa]

FIrst check this guys sources.
Quick reference for MAdden FOR EXAMPLE(from game rankings)
Madden 2003 89,64
Madden 2004 89,00
Madden 2005 89,5(no more NFL2k after this)
Madden 2006 84,11(decline)
Madden 2008 74,80(decline)
Madden 2009 80,00(worse than any game before 2k5 was put down)

This author is a joke.

Author, check your facts....your story is bogus ....

[tabulaRasa]

Didn´t mean to sound too harsh (which I did, sorry) but I was able to debunk the story after one quick check over at game rankings.

[tabulaRasa]

OK to be fair 360 version
06 75
07 81 (on xbox it got 82,00)
08 83
09 84
10 87
In other words, in 5 years they still haven´t surpassed the score they got with Madden 2005 (where they have competetion)

[Rocky]

Rutgers has a better record over the past 3 years than Florida St. Therefore, Rutgers is a better football program than Florida St.

See the problem. There is 25 years of evidence and you only choose to highlight several.

[Peninc]

quite simply sir....you are wrong

[kbmnm247]

Wow, well at least alot of these posts agree with my thoughts on this blatant shock article.

First, the whole review scores thing... I don't want to sound like a broken record so I'll keep it short. You shoot down all of our opinions about the game or even a whole forum or fanbase's opinions on a game yet you based an entire article around paid reviewers' scores. You do know these people are generally nerds who do not play nor care about sports games, right? They were simply hired to review a multitude of games which are mostly NON-sports games so taking their thoughts (after playing these sports games for a MAXIMUM of like a week and a half, another big point the writer fails to mention/acknowledge) as truth on SPORTS games is not scientific in any way.

Second, let's go through those scores you posted anyway and shine a different light on it...
NBA Live - 64, 59, 73, 77
NBA 2K - 81, 84, 81, 84

I could say 2K kept with the times and produced a solid game year after year, they had no need to innovate or put in a game changing feature because they were the king of the castle, getting more sales, and better review scores. What they did though was keep themselves polished and control market share... the competition between these two series is why you see Live increase it's score a ridiculous amount the last 2 years that the data is shown for. That can definitely be attributed to competition, whereas you said this doesn't show competition. Both scores have risen (Live's dramatically) over those 4 years and you discredit competition? That makes no sense and does not relate to the rest of your arguments. Anyway..
EA's NHL - 79, 85, 88
2K's NHL - 75, 78, 71, 69
To think that EA's huge jump in quality of their NHL series wasn't due to NHL 2k slowly taking away sales is ludicrous. As shown here in these scores you can see NHL dramatically improved because they knew they were putting the same thing out there year after year and were behind 2K in that gameplay department so they dramtically improved in that area and now they are the king and make NHL 2K look outdated, hence why 2K is now receiving worse scores.

To be honest those are the only sports you can legitimately compare scores and the games and competition. You can't compare Madden scores without competition because as has already been stated many many MANY reviewers slap a 8.5-9.2 on Madden every year and that's that. Same goes for NCAA. The Show compared to 2K isn't fair because it is only on one console and pretty much The Show has exclusive rights to PS3 games because no one is going to buy 2K baseball over the Show, no one.
Also, if you can't see that Tiger is basically the same game every year then there is something wrong with you. I can play Tiger 08 and I have no desire to get Tiger 10 because there have been hardly any noteworthy improvements. The game is great don't get me wrong but I imagine there would be a lot more new features every year if there was decent competition.

And another thing, you state that quality of developers, time for the cycle, money available are the factors in creating a good game... ok, this might be hard for you to fathom.... ready? You don't think that if there was decent competition out there that a brand like EA would put more time, better quality developers, and more money into a cash cow like Madden? Hell, they f*cking BOUGHT the NFL license just to eliminate NFL2k from their competition in the football market. They didn't want competition, they didn't want to have to improve their game to beat an obviously up-and-coming NFL2k. They knew that that $20 price opened the eyes of alot of people out there that a better football game was being made and so they spent $$$ to eliminate it rather than spend that on developers/innovation. Rather than improve their game because of competition they bought out the competition because they could. (what a joke)

I just think the whole using review scores as your only measure is dumb and in no way believable. You ask people how else you can do it and everyone responds with different ways and you still conveniently read over that line of their post and quote everything else and then say that "well, show me another way". Here are your ways ... # of new features every year (legitimate new features, not ones that were taken out and added back in 2 years later), presentation updates, OS forum general views, reader reviews (who actually play games longer than the 1 week or so paid reviewers alot to a sports game).... etc

Cliffs: You can't base an article where you claim an age-old myth is debunked off of paid reviewer nerds who play a sports game for a week MAX. Especially when sports games are different every time you play them for the most part and many features can not even be tested after only a brief time playing the game.

whew, sorry for the length, but at least this wasted some time at work.

[StormJH1]

EvanRG, I think I get your general point, which is "I want more choices as a consumer, and competition doesn't hurt, so why wouldn't I want competition." We'd probably agree on that point, but Guitar Hero/Rock Band is a poor example because the people who initially developed Guitar Hero left to create Rock Band after Guitar Hero 2. Thus, the "competitior" you credit with creating the innovation of selling eleventy billion instruments with a music game was actually the same company that made Guitar Hero in the first place.

But the fact is that we DON'T have direct competition for Madden right now, and no amount of whining about will change it. Therefore, the only relevant question is: "How much (if any) has the absence of competition hurt?"

All I'm saying is that I don't think it's hurt as much as people think it has. And the reason is because EA never was never really concerned about NFL 2k5's competition in "game quality", or even in "sales", but rather saw NFL 2k5 as a threat to EA's ability to charge $49.99 (now $59.99) for its product. That was the forgotten reason (and the primary one) for why the exclusive deal came about in the first place.

And I think the thing that people aren't being honest about is that an NFL 2k10 very likely would not have evolved very much since 2k5 either. Nothing 2k Sports has done with any of their other franchises suggests that they would've "pushed the envelope" with new feature sets. 2k Basketball is a good game, but it has not fundamentally changed at all since the days of the PS2. And APF 2k8 was a chance for them to create a clearly superior next-gen football product, and they didn't do it. True, many hardcore gamers prefer 2k football to EA football, but the overwhelming majority of consumers don't, so Madden was never going to become a 2k clone.

Finally, I disagree that there's no harm that could've come out of an open competition. There's simply no time in a 10-month development cycle to completely reinvent everything you do as a football game, while eyeballing your competitor and copying their good ideas. Rather, we probably would've seen much more gimmicky changes, such as vision cone (2006) and weapons system (2008), which did nothing to the gameplay, but merely added a marketable layer to the underlying engine, to create the perception of a "new" game. Also, if 2k ever did successfully cut into Madden's sales (which would've been unlikely), that would only leave Madden with less resources to take on theincreasingly expensive process of making next-gen games.

[sanders]

You're argument is completely flawed. For one it's not about the review scores at all. It's how much is done to improve the games!

If EA, for example, implements a bunch of new features and some work and some don't work all that well it will receive a decent but not super high rating. If the game is basically the same as last years with new grachics and a couple of new features it will get the same rating.

When there is no competition and the company knows they will sell x amount of units as long as the game at least meets a certain bar there is little incentive to do anymore because the only thing that goes up is cost.

Now if they currently have say 30% of the market they will be spending time and money to try and capture the other 70% of the market.