Will Technology Destroy Some Sports Gaming - Dazraz's Blog

Dazraz's Blog

Will Technology Destroy Some Sports Gaming

Posted on April 29, 2013 at 07:08 PM.

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I'm sure it doesn't need pointing out to anyone that the number of sports games has progressively reduced in line with each recent console generation. Rare is it now when we have a choice of more than 1 game in any given sport.

Having just read an interview with a developer for the forthcoming Rugby Challenge 2 in which he highlights his doubts of being able to release such a game for the next generation of hardware, I can't help but be concerned that we are heading for a further implosion in the number & variety of sport games that will become available to us. As technology increases it is not surprising that our expectations grow for a game that not only replicates the physical characteristics of a sport but also reproduces the whole broadcast feel within its presentation. To fulfill these demands, no matter how great the technology, requires an ever growing investment from developers.

EA can no doubt throw money at games such as FIFA knowing that there is such a massive target audience on hand. But even a global sport such as soccer has now only 2 mainstream games (outside of management sims) available for today's consoles as opposed to the plethora on hand in earlier times.

How then can games with a much lower target audience justify such investments. It's simply unlikely that they can or will. Sidhe have done a great job with the resources at hand to create a solid Rugby game but let's not kid ourselves if Rugby garnered the same attention as soccer or baseball then this game would have received heavy critisism.

As top tier games progress further & further it will become harder & harder for developers to pull together the resources to create such titles. Take Cricket as an example. We used to have cricket games from both EA & Codemasters but we haven't had a Cricket title for a number years. Boxing is currently in an hiatus with no confirmation from EA of a continuation of the Fight Night series. College Basketball has shown no sign of returning on this generation of hardware so it would be highly unlikely to see it appear on the next generation. The return of NASCAR to our gaming line up has hardly been jaw dropping so you wonder if we will see this sport make the leap to next gen also.

Do we as a consumer have to accept that our options for sports simulations are to become more & more limited as technology progresses. If not then we may well have to accept that the divide between the quality of mainstream games & second tier games is going to get greater & greater.