[Cryolemon]

The thing is, the lack of a license isn't why games like Backbreaker and 2k8 haven't sold well. It's certainly a factor, but it's not the only factor. 2k8 lacked much in the way of customization, despite what they claimed. Added to that, the legends gimmick didn't work at all, and the lack of a franchise mode really didn't help.

Backbreaker had much better customization, but lacked a lot in the way of "real football", Yeah, the physics was good, but that can only go so far. Especially when you consider the "arcade-y" nature of the player models, the vanilla playbook, AI which wasn't great and a rather divisive camera. Bacbreaker was a good start, but it remains to be seen if we'll get a BB2 (I think we will, but not soon).

As I've said before (quite often, actually) I see no reason at all why an unlicensed game can't sell well enough to be released every year. It just has to be done in the right way. Of course there are any number of opinions about what that way should be. My opinion is that as long as you have a game which plays as well or better than Madden, and allows you to recreate the NFL (maybe even if not online) it will do well enough to survive.

Ideally for me personally such a game would go further than letting you recreate the NFL, but I appreciate that: 1) that isn't everyone's opinion, 2) it would likely make the game take a long time to develop and 3) the more complex a game the harder it is to debug effectively.