[pietasterp]

Quote: Originally Posted by sportyguyfl31

It's easy and lazy to play the "It's EA's fault" game. 2K has made their fair share of bad decisions and have been their own enemy as well. They've had their chances. Football? They had a wonderful opportunity with APF2K8, and put forth a half hearted effort. The result was a self fulfilling prophesy: Excitement, followed by the realization that the game had a lot of warts, followed by 2K's half hearted attempt to patch the game, followed by a lose of interest by the community, followed by 2k abandoning the game. They've had plenty of chances with baseball, but always produce a bug filled mess. Eventually your mistakes are going to catch up to you.

I understand your point, and I agree to some extent, but I think the difference is that because of EA's overwhelming dominance (financially and otherwise) in the sports game genre, all other competitors are left with very little margin for error. How many companies produce nothing but A+ games year-after-year? Of course 2k has made errors, but even when they have the better product, it doesn't necessarily make a difference in sales because of EA's sales force and marketing. And every time they produce a less-than-A+ game, they get absolutely hammered in the market and press. Meanwhile, EA can produce mediocre title after mediocre title, and their sales stay consistent because of the mass of loyal purchasers. EA can survive mediocrity; everyone else has to be superior for many years in a row before people pay attention, with no missteps along the way (NBA2k has been better than EA's hoops title for almost a decade; only in the past few years has it made a difference in sales). The barrier to break EA's grip on the genre is just too high at this point. And that's a bad thing, in my opinion.