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Mandalore76 on 22 November 2017
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DonFerrari said:
SegataSanshiro said:

No one is allowed to make NCAAF games anymore. There was some lawsuit against using the likeness of players or something. I can't remember exactly. College sports games are extinct.

I was talking about not using any license.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

That's normal due to how licensing worked at the time.

At the time there didn't exist an unified Fifa license - you had to license every club, every stadium and every single player separately - twice in fact for the players, once for the naming rights and once for the visuals (which costed a lot more than just the names, hence why in the early 3D Fifas the players had the correct names, but didn't look anything like their namesakes). I could even dig into my pile of german PC Games magazines to find the article which explained the problem in great detail. Of course, taking such a huge amount of different licenses was a real nightmare and generally just wasn't worth it, hence why most soccer games at the time didn't have any licensing at all.

I do agree on the rest (apart from complaining about the port, as it could have been done much better and, as a result, would certainly also have sold better), that's just... bad sportsmanship.

Well yes lincensing was a nightmare at the time. That was just to point that not having doesn't necessarily makes success impossible, but sure that after having licenses it will be harder to succeed without it.

On complaining about the port in a constructive way and having it improve is valid, but unfortunatelly we know that a lot of the complains are for the sake of complaining and the people didn't buy the game and wouldn't buy even if it have all they requested. Also we get those remarks that Nintendo gamers don't like these bad games... so in the end it look more like checklist to justify a failure... Still I understand Nintendo gamers not buying Fifa and CoD, I also don't do that, but I wouldn't request they to be released as well.

I want a Madden NFL game on Nintendo Switch because I would buy it.  I bought Madden 13 on Wii U.  Even though it didn't have the current engine the other platforms got, the ability to pick plays on the gamepad and draw my own hot routes and blitzes at the line of scrimmage was the far superior experience for me.  When EA dropped support and refused to bring another Madden title to Wii U, they lost me as a customer.  Instead of continuing to buy the annual installments on Xbox One, I just kept playing my Madden 13 for all these years.  Up until then, I had been buying Madden releases on SNES, Genesis, PlayStation 1 & 2, Xbox 360...  Now that EA has flat out ignored an entire platform(s) for 5 consecutive years, they have lost 5 years of business from me.  I'm probably not the only one either.  There is "0" reason not to put a single Madden NFL title on Nintendo Switch right now.  The system is hot.  It is considered "the tech purchase" of this holiday season.  EA is withholding sales from themselves, eroding their customer base (of people like me) and contributing to the devaluing of the NFL product by not having a presence on all systems (especially the system most in demand in the NFL's market, NA).  I point to Madden's slumping sales this year.  The first year that Madden sales in over 15 years that didn't break a million first week.  And no, I don't buy the excuse that "the customers weren't lost, they've just gone digital".  Look at Fifa's trend:

Fifa 16 (PS4 1st week):  2.7 million
Fifa 17 (PS4 1st week):  4.4 million
Fifa 18 (PS4 1st week):  4.3 million

Annual sports games have a very short shelf life.  A lot of the people who buy Madden and Fifa buy the physical copy so they can trade it in before the next one comes out and get at least something back in return.  You can't do that with digital.  Hence why Fifa's sales haven't gone down with the rise of digital distribution, they've actually increased significantly. 

Lastly, Madden needs to be on all systems, because the NFL isn't a worldwide sport.  All of it's teams are based in the USA.  The NA market makes up 70% of Madden game sales.  The Switch is hot in NA right now, that's why it makes the most sense.  But, as it's test game, EA releases a game whose 73% of its sales comes from the Switch's weakest market (Europe)?  Come on.