He articulated exactly why I've essentially stopped purchasing EA products. I'll admit I'm not 100% off the train yet, but my spending on their products has dwindled considerably in the last five years. The fact is, they don't produce product worth the investment of my time and money. I get they produce quantity over quality for reasons mostly relating to their business model. It is their job to earn as much profit as possible. I can't hate them for it, that is capitalism. But I can quit consuming the product when it no longer relays any benefits to me, and that's the road that's coming.

Eventually, I hope it will work itself out as consumers wise up. Unfortunately, though, the general populace probably doesn't care about the end product as much as us here at OS. The more casual gaming public thinks Madden is forever awesome--and it may be under some classifications--but it isn't football. NCAA has been dreadful this entire generation because of the lack of progress and legacy gameplay flaws. Although I haven't owned a Madden game in years, I've played them, and can say many of the same issues exist there.

Lack of innovation, progress, and even simple improvement are certainly the biggest detriments to the future of these franchises. Of course NCAA may die off for other reasons, and EA can no longer monopolize the NFL license, but I have little hope of another developer coming in and taking up the challenge. If I knew how to program games, I'd give it a shot myself haha.

As long as this is the status quo, I don't envision much in the way of change. Money rules all, and in most instances, creative vision is second to profit.

I totally understand what AJ is saying here. The corporate mentality is to spend as little as possible and get the most return. What happens is you lose out on features and improvements that could be made, that could be revolutionary, because they just don't bring enough "return on investment". They know they have the "exclusive" license and a huge marketing machine to sell the product. It is not a game to them, and creativity means nothing. They are selling a product and looking for ROI for the investors. It's a shame, EA was a beast before they got so big. The lack of advancement in their titles (stagnation) is hurting the videogame industry.

Waaa waaa waaa...bottom line is those guys don't know how to make a good football game. What is it exactly that the suits are doing to prevent them from making the game better than something another CORPORATION did LAST gen? Absolutely nothing, that's what. The game has no SOUL to it. They don't know how to edit sound and other BASIC presentation element appropriatley, they don't know how to create models that make you feel like you are actually controlling unique individuals on the playing field, they don't know how to iron out glitches like DBs running OFF the field and RB's being TACKLED by their own WIDE RECEIVER. EA is full of it and so is this dude.