To answer this question... The short answer is that I work for the money I get. I only get so much, and if I spend it one place, I can't spend it again on something else. As such, I care what I buy and I want the best. The reason that I wait to see if the game is any good is because I hate wasting money on second rate things, that goes for anything really... I'm never the first to get something just because it's hyped by some. Since the 2K NFL games have been taken away, I've been bitten by EA for five years and as such, one bitten twice shy... Seeing as how I've biten several times now, I'm really skeptical of the whole thing and as such, it's going to take a game that's nearly perfect out of the box for me to buy it... No patches to fix obvious problems. I can see it now, having to play an unpatched version of a game several years down the road because my HD's been cleaned and I no longer have the patches available for download... That's what it all comes down to. The 2K games worked fine right out of the box, and still play great, as such, I can still play it in five years and get a finished product. If EA continues this way, it won't just be a case of the rosters being out of date for theit games, but the games will be rendered useless once the patches are no longer there to download...