Yeah, they do well in FIFA and NHL, but who cares?
Why cant they put their profits into making a Madden or NBA Live worthy of their brand?
I guarantee that if Rockstar made a football game it would be heads and shoulders above whatever it is that EA trots out there erry year.
If Rockstar could do that they’d have done it already. As it is Rockstar basically makes the same game over and over again and the guy you’re moving around still moves with all the natural grace of a mannequin.
Could it be because they have an exclusive license for NFL video games and therefore have little to no competitive pressure to improve?
They suck because they can, they don’t do better because they don’t have to. Like you said, Madden and FIFA will sell a gallilion copies every single year no matter what.
This. I stopped buying EA Sports products as soon as their response to being the worst NFL game on the market was to start up the era of exclusive licensing. From a business point of view it’s a fascinating case - they clearly ran the numbers and found the most profitable route - but as a gamer I severely disapprove, and it’s prevented me from buying several FIFA and NHL games I’d have probably grabbed.
NFL GameDay forever!
I guess I’ll be the first to say that they definitely don’t do alright with the NHL series in terms of gameplay. Unfortunately, NHL is the only hockey game on the market, so it still sells well.
I think a lot of it comes down to complacency. Outside of their NBA games, EA knows they’re going to get a significant amount of sales simply based on reputation and name recognition. If I’m a casual customer, seeing FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer on the shelf, I’m probably going to spring for the game that I know is associated with a name I recognize. It gets even better for EA with their NFL and NHL games, since there’s no competition.
EA aims at its market: People who want to play sports video games. If those people want a relatively simple interface and comforting graphics, then that’s what they get. If they wanted more, they would demand more.
RPG aficionados expect more from their games and the manufacturers respond accordingly. It would affect sales if they did not
People demanded more, EA responded by buying exclusive licenses to make sport games. They didn’t respond to their market, they took over it.
Of course they responded to their market. Their market just didn’t like the response.
If the demands mattered that much, it would hit EA’s bottom line in lost sales. These things don’t matter enough to gamers to substantially adjust their buying behavior.
EA is no different from any other industry in this regard. People all say they want better, faster, cheaper. What they are willing to accept is usually less than that.
People forget that in most sports, EA didn’t buy the exclusive license, they just outlasted all the other companies that used to produce sports games. And in some sports (baseball), another company bought the exclusive license, blew it, and now EA is hesitant to jump back in because it would be expensive to develop a game from scratch (which is why no one challenges EA in hockey or basketball).
They certainly do better than anyone else ever has. Simulating sports while allowing user inputs is a huge, huge technical challenge. I think people are ascribing to EA, or anyone else, the assumed ability to do something that there is actually no evidence can be done.
I’d make the case that there have been several games that do a better job than the latest EA offerings. The players in EA’s games have a pretty limited assortments of animations. Just looking at other games I’ve played, NHL 2K10 and NHL Hitz Pro were much better in this regard. Strategy is also a huge issue in the EA games. You can pretty easily win a game simply by hitting everything that moves and shooting at every opportunity.