Death of College Hoops and Why it won’t help EA Sports

By now you’ve seen the news that College Hoops 2k9 and 2k Sports have broken off talks with College Licensing Company to acquire the rights for the 2008 release.

With this announcement EA Sports and 2K Sports, through official licenses, have killed off the best playing sports games. ESPN NFL 2k5 was killed off when EA Sports bought NFL exclusivity. In retaliation, Take-Two and 2K Sports bought the Major League Baseball license that killed MVP 05. And now the best playing basketball title is killed off in favor for an average basketball game.

While EA might think this is the right strategy — they probably think this license will have similar effect, like that of Madden’s exclusivity, on NCAA March Madness. The football war was always one by Madden regardless of what NFL 2k did. A last ditch effort to generate sales with a $29.99 price point in 2004 did a lot to bolster NFL 2k’s sales. The game matched Madden’s sales on the Xbox but was crushed handily on the PS2.

Switch the games for a minute and College Hoops could do well if it was the only game in town. It would pick up some March Madness sales but the quality of the game would have done enough to keep customers.

I think March Madness is so bad that hardcore fans will not buy March Madness unless they see a drastic improvement. In a niche market, with a higher price for an exclusive license, and production costs, EA Sports is counting on a lot going right to make March Madness very profitable.

One final thought on this — is this the final straw for sports fans. Sooner or later, there will be a sales backlash for poor games earning licensing exclusivity. It could be March Madness is the first casualty.

FIFA Doubles Over PES

The UK Gaming sites are reporting that FIFAr has outsold PES almost 2 to 1, in 2007. And to start out the new year FIFA 08 is the leader in the UK sales charts. I find it interesting that FIFA beat Halo, Call of Duty. The casual gaming movement had two winners in the Brain Age series.

Pro Evolution Soccer isn’t doing poorly by any means it finished 4th for 2007 and started out the new year in 6th. That’s months after these two games were originally released. FIFA also outsold Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4, The Simpson’s Game and Need for Street Pro Street.

So why is any of this important?

1. Shows how important real teams, kits and players are to footie games.
2. Shows a playable FIFA can outsell the competition.
3. Shows how stale Konami has been. Just a few years ago PES sales in Europe rivaled FIFA.

New Year, Same Controversy

So a few months back, Gerstmann-gate, turned the rock over showing the ugly side of the review industry.

Well, the story doesn’t seem to go away. The Escapist is reporting that the head of Maxim who employed a movie reviewer that appeased the movie industry, moved over to Game Spot, before Gerstmann was to be fired.

So what can we make of all this? Maxim employed a shill of a film reviewer in Peter Hammond, who wrote meaningless drivel to get his name (and Maxim’s) plastered on every movie poster in Hollywood, and acceded to distributor demands to alter the content of his reviews. In October, the head guy over Maxim moved to Gamespot, where a game reviewer, Jeff Gerstmann, was fired, allegedly for not being willing to act like Peter Hammond.

In the world of sports games, apparently, Sony Sports Division will not allow their games to be reviewed by EGM/1UP. (Thanks to Kotaku for the link.) Sony Sports currently produces MLB The Show and NBA The Life.

What perks my ears, isn’t the EGM/1UP reviews of these two games but it’s the other big sites scores on NBA, The Life. According to Metacritic here are the scores given by EGM or 1UP for NBA The Life and MLB The Show since the 06 versions.

NBA The Life 06 (PS2)
Overall: 63
1UP: 40
EGM: N/A

NBA The Life 07 (PS2)
Overall: 63
1UP: 50
EGM: N/A

NBA The Life 07 (PS3)
Overall: 63
1UP: 65
EGM: 55

MLB 06 The Show (PS2)
Overall: 83
EGM: 55
1UP: 90

MLB 07 The Show (PS2)
Overall 83
1UP: 85
EGM: N/A

MLB 07 The Show (PS3)
Overall: 76
1UP: 55
EGM: N/A

So their NBA The Life reviews were in-line with the averages but the MLB versions raked the game. It’s not an issue of math because both 1UP and EGM use 10-point with decimal system.

You would have to assume the Sony contacted EGM/1UP to get clarification why their game was reviewed so poorly and even working with the company to rectify the issues with the review. Let’s face it, their NBA game wasn’t very good and the scores show that. But the scores for MLB The Show, seem to be harsh.

According to the article above, the publisher will comment on this action by Sony Sports and two other game companies. More to come…

Really Slow and Other Interesting Things

As you can tell by the less frequent posts, there’s just little out there in terms of sports gaming news.

In the void, there are tons of stuff in you like electronics coming out of CES. Engadget at CES.

NFL Street comes out this week. Which I’ll look at later this year as a rental.

In the world of politics, WoW’ers have formed an online march for Ron Paul. See Game Politics. Put this in the list of things, the founding fathers would have never envisioned.

Kotaku has done a piece, on the Wii tackling the grey (Ebay) market.

As of this writing I cannot say if this was a calculated move by Nintendo to thwart the profit-hungry eBay grey market or simply a happy side-effect of a last-ditch effort to save face in the eyes of consumers worrying about where the product they wanted to purchase was, but Reggie’s press conference and the subsequent console flood neatly nipped in the bud what could have been a terribly expensive Christmas for families looking for a little motion-controlled joy. Whatever the case may be, the end result is a small victory for the hardworking folks out there more worried about the smiles on their children’s face than the thickness of their wallet.

The million dollar question is when will we see the Wii regularly on the store selves? And could it be another year of Wii shortages?

Sony at the CES

Kotaku posted something interesting regarding Sony.
Sony move away from the PS3

A year later and Sony doesn’t try to hype up PS3 even with the recent news that more studios are jumping on the Blu-Ray bandwagon.

Looking at the first half of 2008

The first half of every year is always slower then the latter half but here’s the schedule for sports games in the first part of year.

January
NFL Tour
The game looks to have less features and options than NFL Street and with it receiving a bargain EA price point it doesn’t look like this is a full fledged game. Prediction: Rental might be too to spend on this game.

February
FIFA Street
Another EA Big title that hasn’t really caught on. The game has a new artistic direction and there’s been some gameplay changes. EA has been able to milk FIFA Street every couple of years and I wouldn’t expect anything groundbreaking. Prediction: Fun Diversion.

MLB: The Show 08(PS3 Only)
The best playing next-gen title returns and it looks like the producer’s are adding a lot of sparkle on the game. But they can because the AI is still the best for the next gen systems. Predication: Day one purchase for most — for others it will cause some of you to buy a PS3.

March
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
The European reviews of the game haven’t been stellar. And the producer has said PES 2008 has gone off the tracks a bit. The gameplay has been sped up but once you get past that it still has the venerable WE/PES gameplay. Prediction: Good Game but not the FIFA killer as in year’s past.

MLB 2k8
Ben Brinkman, the producer of the game, has been doing his part of claiming this game has improved to be the premier baseball title. I see this version as year two of Brinkman’s MLB 2k revolution so just like MVP, there will be bugs, it will be a huge improvement and it will be mostly fun. Prediction: Not quite there but close.

April
UEFA Euro 2008
Normally I would say, oh great another milking of the FIFA game, but FIFA 08 was the most improved game on 2007 and the engine is actually fun. While we should see international and club competitions in FIFA, this is going to be the closet we get to a real Euro 2008. Prediction: Maybe not a must buy, but a promising game due to FIFA 08.

May
Waiting for NCAA 09

June
More waiting…

If it’s in the game…

So on New Year’s Day, like most of you, I watched the Winter Classic on NBC. The hockey wasn’t the best but it was enough of a spectacle to want to see something like that next year.

While I was watching the game, I thought wouldn’t it be great to see this in the 08 releases of the hockey games. Surely, EA Sports could slap the Bills stadium from Madden into NHL 09 and have a Winter Classic.

So if it’s in the game it should be in NHL 09 and NHL 2k9.

Happy New Year

I took a little longer than expected hiatus from SC but I’m back to blogging today.

Happy New Year everybody.

Irony of Gamefly

So two of my 360’s go done over the holiday period. I only have two because, when my first 360 went down they weren’t fixing them at no cost.

Guess what appears as sent…College Hoops 2k8. Fantastic. I guess I’ll get to play that sometime in March. That sounds about right.