This topic has got me fired up. Where to start? To those complaining about the "whining": Where do you get off telling "sim" gamers that they're expectations are unrealistic? Why is your $60 more valuable than my $60? Maybe you like playing many games for short periods of time, but maybe I only like, say, football games. What if all I do is wait for the new football game to come out and dedicate all of my free "video game-playing time" to playing said football game. Why is it more important that gamers like you (who will dedicate maybe a fraction of the time I will dedicate to a title) are catered to and not the passionate fans of the sport/game?

This is the problem: the whole structure of the development and transaction cycle of sports games. I yearn for the day when people put their money where their mouth is. You can sit there and say I ask for too much and that (my personal favorite)"it's just a video game, not real life", but let's see how much you really care, with your wallet. I propose that games be developed on continuous cycles where new updates are released WHEN THEY'RE READY. The user pays a monthly fee for access to the product. This would solve the 1 year development cycle problem, and in turn all the bug and testing deadlines. Also, hopefully this would ease some of the financial pressure on the game companies to sell because they get a monthly income and they can focus on putting out quality updates. People who truly care about the game/sport will buy in and those casual players can buy the crappy $65 title once a year.

I agree with alot of people saying the small stuff like shoes and hairstyles don't matter as much, but when it comes down to the fundamentals of a sport it should work.The basic should be what everything in the game is based on then move on to presentation and different modes.Most sports gamers aren't asking for too much they just want authenticity on the lowest level. As an NBA fan i'm tired of players being left open, deng raining down 3's, nimble footed big men, miraculous cpu comebacks against much better teams, and players having no traction with the ground. Sure if the ref makes a dumb call, deng gets hot, or the cpu outplays me on both ends i'm cool with that, but it happens way too frequently. All of these issues aren't been going on for almost a decade.

IT's articles like this that allow developers to keep dropping sub-par efforts. It's not about unrealistic expectations, they need to drop games that are up to reasonable standards. I don't believe any game was as good as it could have been this year. PERIOD