[majesty95]

I saw Pasta Padre post about the decline in sales numbers and a subsequent post on here about it. I thought I would take a look back at NCAAfrom a sales perspective since it transformed from Bill Walsh CollegeFootball to NCAA Football 98. I'll also look at what we most likely can expect going forward.

Here are the global sales numbers for every year since NCAAFootball 98:

98 - 700k
99 - 1.06M
2000 - 950k
2001 - 700k
2002 - 1.57M
2003 - 2.16M
2004 - 2.25M
2005 - 2.53M
06 - 2.81M
07 - 3.32M
08 - 1.92M
09 - 2.10M
10 - 2.48M
11 - 2.06M
12 - 1.69M
13 - 750k (currently)

I think we can all agree that the time period of NCAA 2005-07 wasthe greatest era in the franchise's history. Most people (myselfincluded) believe 06 was the greatest version ever made. That got meto thinking about what has caused the drop off and what will cause arebound?

From 2002 though 07, we saw an increase in sales every year. Then there was a drastic decrease in 08.

Part of the decline was probably because of the economy. We werejust getting into what turned out to be a recession and people wereclearly being more frugal with their hard earned cash. The other partwas likely the debut on next gen.

NCAA 07 debuted on the 360 and, while it received decent to goodreviews, there was a notable drop off from the high level of reviewsthat its predecessor on the PS2/Xbox had been receiving. Those reviewsdeclined all the way through NCAA 09. Finally, NCAA 10 received a slightbump but it was still nowhere near where they had been on last gen.

Since NCAA 10 we have seen a large mixture of reviews (good andbad) but nothing that has returned the series to the form it saw inthe mid-2000's. Not coincidentally, we have also seen a consistentdrop in sales numbers every year since NCAA 10 as well.

So why is that?

I believe the single biggest thing holding back NCAA has been thegame engine. The build that the current game is based off of wasbuilt in 07/08 when the game debuted on next gen. Almost anyprogrammer will tell you that when the 360 and PS3 debuted, they werea nightmare to program for.

That initial build of NCAA Next Gen was crafted by engineers thatstill did not have a good grasp of the next gen systems. The gameengine they built was limited because of their inexperienceprogramming for those systems. So, we got a stripped down version ofthe NCAA we were accustomed to.

While game developers have become more skilled at programming for thetwo systems (360 programming was made infinitely more user friendlythanks to new developer tools), there is still not a complete graspof how to make everything work exactly how they want it to(especially on the PS3). This is being made even worse (I believe) bytrying to make everything work on a game engine that was strippeddown and lacked functionality to begin with (due to the complexity ofprogramming).

So, where do we go from here?

I think the answer is finally, the new Infinity engine that will bedebuting with Madden 13. We are finally getting a new game enginebuilt with the new tools that have come along and by engineers thatnow have 6-7 years of experience with the current generation ofconsoles.

Beginning with Madden 13 (and most likely carrying over to NCAA14), I believe we will finally begin to see the true potential ofboth the systems the game are being played on and the gamesthemselves. Hopefully, that will bring a new wave of features andimprovements and we will finally see the reviews return to the levelsthey were at in the mid-2000's.

EA is hoping they will see a return in the sales numbers as well.

So, with all of the doom and gloom that has been posted, I hope this breathes a slight bit of hope and optimism back into the forums. I have not been terribly excited about the direction the game has taken over the past few years. However, I truly believe the guys at EA and Tiburon are committed to finally getting both of these franchises back on track.

Hopefully, we begin to realize that commitment at the end of this month when Madden 13 debuts.