[jpdavis82]

Quote: Originally Posted by GiantBlue76

The problem with this view point is that it is from the "I'm a developer" POV. Anyone who actually does software development (and in your case, games) is going to empathize with this situation. However, you can't expect consumers to give a rat's *** about that. The average consumer should not be concerned about past mistakes, dev team leadership changes, developer screw ups and other nonsense that equates to a sub par product. From a consumer's point of view, they see the final product and they scratch their head and they are not wrong to do so. The reason why Tiburon feels they are in a no-win situation is their own doing, not because the consumer base is a bunch of cry babies. The only reason why they can actually pull this off and use those excuses is because there is no other game. If there was, miraculously, that half time show probably would have been 10 times better. When you know that it can "wait until next year" to be fully fleshed out, it changes things dramatically. After all, what is the average consumer to do, go buy the "other" football game? Many people realize what has happened here, including myself. They basically squandered a decade of football gaming and now we have a massive pile of dung that they need to un-screw. It's difficult to do, takes a long time and no one is going to be happy, but hey, that's their (Tiburon's) own fault. You can't turn to the consumer and tell them that they are "Crying", "whining" or whatever when they've seen what we had 10 years ago and it was better than what we have now.

The consumer may not care but the elite sports games all have one thing in common, years and years of consistent leadership and development. We're comparing apples to oranges unless someone can show me a sports game that became elite in 2 years. You can bring in the best dev team in the world but without consistent direction and leadership you're going to end up nowhere. If Madden continues on this path that its been on for these past two years we should never have to have this conversation again in the future. If not, lets all pack our bags and head to see Roger Goodell with pitchforks outside his office because its the NFL who determines the exclusivity of the license.