The most milked franchise in gaming

[Onyxmeth]

izaaz101 said:

Onyxmeth said:

Absolutely not. The Xbox 360 Arcade has no harddrive and limited memory. The Wii has limited memory. The PS2 and DS cannot receive the updates. The PSP has variable amounts of memory, but not a very easy way of getting DLC. Also sports games are highly downstream titles. Many people only buy them and nothing else, and are not knowledgeble about going online and doing DLC. Also not everyone is connected to the internet on their consoles.

Have I given you enough reasons as to why yearly sports releases are still necessary?

 

The Arcade does have limited memory, you are correct. However, IIRC, all Arcades (and Cores) were forced to install the NXE which required a download, were they not? If they were able to get the NXE on their 360, getting a roster update, which would in all likelihood be a few megabytes, should not be a problem.

The wii does have limited memory, but with the SD slot now allowing SDHC cards to be used, and games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band utilizing it for DLC, there's no reason why a roster update couldn't be applied in the same way.

In the case of the DS, I can't think of too many sports that are released yearly for it, aside from Madden which EA is contractually obligated to. But you would be right in suggesting that the DS could not get updates. However, this could be implemented as a "DSi-enhanced" feature, allowing those who have the DSi to get roster updates, and those that have a DS Phat/Lite to purchase a new copy yearly.

The PS2 is in pretty much the same boat as the DS: the hard drive owners would be able to get the updates, just like those who were able to purchase extra maps for Socom 3, and those who didn't have the hard drive would not be able to enjoy the roster updates.

I don't have very much experience with the PSP, so I won't really comment on that, except to pose a question: how do you get the PSP firmware updates onto the PSP, and couldn't you use the same method for the hypothetical roster updates?

I will agree with you that the sports games are usually downstream, and in fact I have a cousin who buys nothing but the newest NHL and FIFA. However, from what I've seen (oh no, an anecdote!) he plays online regularly. I'm not going to paint everyone with the same brush, and claim that they all play online, but to me it would make sense that people who buy the same game year after year are highly competitive with respect to that game, and would seek out a harder challenge, which would be found online.

Now that I've gone and written all this, I'm starting to disagree with myself. I stated before that the pardon period is over, but now I think it's not yet.........however, by the time the next generation of home consoles and handhelds release, I think the pardon period is over.

I'm glad you see the reality of it. Look at how much you had to think of to get it onto each platform. There are too many restrictions. Now if you had gone ahead and suggested that roster updates would be a welcome option as an alternative method, then I can get behind that. It would be nice to have the option for those of us inclined to take it. However they can only do it so many times. You can't expect your Madden 06 to still get development time put into it to give roster updates when Madden 2012 is around the corner. It would probably need to be a two year cycle. A Madden 09 owner could purchase a Madden 2010 roster update, but a Madden 08 owner couldn't purchase the 2010 update.

You also have to remember though that each year there are additions in all of these sports games. Soemtimes it's rather small, but sometimes they are large(like online leagues) and the companies don't have a strict schedule on what years get the big updates. It's just whatever they think up that given year.