I think that once a solid foundation for a game is established, ie: The Show, it will be very possible to keep up****** and adding "the little things" to make the game a winner.

I know hockey isn't a popular sport, but if Madden was near as good as NHL 09, their would be calls for game of the year.

There's no reason that developers can't do both short-term and long-term planning in their games. Whether they do that or not, though, the core gameplay and features take games the longest to develop, and for most game franchises, those are already in place.

I do look forward to NBA 2K10, mainly because I don't feel the need to purchase that every year and I never bought 2K9. For games like The Show and NHL 09, there isn't really anything they would need to work on to take a year off.

I think that all fans of games would appreciate if the developers for sports games started from the basics. get the fundamentals right with gameplay and get the core system down. There doesn't have to be alot of extra features if the core of the gameplay is amazing. Then the following years they build upon that gameplay and add the extra bells and whistles. All these games try to do too much in one year. start from ground up and working to make the best product instead of adding one or two things to try and cover up the mistakes of the previous years

Well said Chris- I couldn't of said it better myself.

Back in the PS2 days I never thought twice about picking up sports titles yearly. You always seemed to know what you were getting back then, and most of our core complaints always had to do with graphics, or animations, never about core gameplay.

What was even better was that there were 2 choices every year. I wasn't a big 2K footballer so I got Madden...I wasn't a big Live hoopster so I got 2k. Basically there was something for everyone.

I miss those days alot because the past 5 years of this "current' console generation has been torture for sports gamers. The quality has not been there, the little details we once took for granted are gone (BOWL PATCHES), and there is hardly any competition.

I'm sad to say as a hardcore sports gamer that the days of yearly purchases,aside from fufilling my writing obligations for this site, are over. Sports game developers need to do all of us a huge favor and move to a 2 year development cycle. Stop being so concerned with your own pocketbooks, and consider your consumers for a change.

This is why gamers need Nintendo to become a 1st party sim sports developer more than ever...haha..had to plug it ;-)

Bumble;thats not the developer's decision, its the publisher who decides this. The guys making the games have no say whatsoever as far as development cycle. And the publisher wouldn't do it, b/c no matter what anybody says, they'd make less money, and public companies have to make business decisions that make them money, regardless of "quality" issues.