If no college basketball game releases on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720, it will mark the first generation of consoles without an NCAA basketball game since the days of the NES, Atari and Sega Master System.

Starting with 1992's NCAA Basketball, multiple college basketball games have appeared in every console generation since the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
 

16-Bit

Super Nintendo

NCAA Basketball (1992)
NCAA Final Four Basketball (1995)
College Slam (1996)

Sega Genesis

NCAA Final Four Basketball (1994)
Dick Vitale's Awesome Baby! College Hoops (1994)
Coach K College Basketball (1995)
College Slam (1996)

32-Bit and 64-Bit

Sony PlayStation

College Slam (1996)
NCAA Final Four (1997 - 2001)
NCAA March Madness (1998 - 2001)

Nintendo 64

Fox Sports College Hoops (1999)

128-Bit

PlayStation 2 and Xbox

NCAA Final Four (2001 - 2004)
NCAA March Madness (2002 - 2008)
College Hoops (2K3 - 2K8)

Current Generation

Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3

College Hoops (2K6 - 2K8)
NCAA Basketball (2007 - 2010)
NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition (2009)

The steady production of college basketball games halted midway through the current generation, as a combination of mediocre sales, expensive licensing fees and rising development costs forced both 2K Sports and EA Sports to retire their collegiate basketball brands.

Sales of NCAA basketball games immediately dropped over 50 percent following the transition from older consoles to the current generation:

End Of Previous Generation

ESPN College Hoops 2K5 (PS2/Xbox) -- 700,000 North American units sold
NCAA March Madness 2005 (PS2/Xbox) -- 650,000 North American units sold

Multiplatform Releases on Current Generation

College Hoops 2K7 (PS3/360) -- 340,000 North American units sold
College Hoops 2K8 (PS3/360) -- 270,000 North American units sold

NCAA March Madness 08 (PS3/360) -- 260,000 North American units sold
NCAA Basketball 09 (PS3/360) -- 330,000 North American units sold
NCAA Basketball 10 (PS3/360) -- 550,000 North American units sold
 

Only by NCAA Basketball 10 did the genre begin to show any signs of recovery, but due to the inclusion of the CBS and ESPN audio/visual presentation, the added licensing expenses likely offset the game's 40 percent sales increase.

In the previous generation, a quarter-million or half-million units sold might have ensured the continued profitability of EA Sports' college basketball franchise, but with the company now paying fees to the NCAA, ESPN and CBS, those 550,000 copies sold probably were not enough for the publisher to break even.
 

This year, March Madness' opening weekend averaged a 6.3 overnight television rating, which is the highest rating for the first weekend of play since 1991 -- Nielsen's "overnight" rating equals the percentage of American households watching the game.

"Prime time" tournament coverage running from 5:15 PM to 9:15 PM also was the most-watched since 1991, scoring an 11.8 overnight rating.

By comparison, last year's NBA Finals averaged a 10.1 overnight rating; this year's Daytona 500 drew a 9.9 overnight rating; the 2012 MLB World Series averaged a 7.6 overnight rating.

Ratings-wise, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament has become America's most popular non-football sporting event. Clearly, Americans love to watch college basketball in March -- the rest of the year, not so much.

Starting in November and ending in April, college basketball games are televised nightly on ESPN. Non-cable subscribers also have access to weekly Saturday and Sunday games on CBS and ABC.

These regular season games draw much lower ratings, indicating that most Americans only care about college hoops during the season's exciting finale.

Viewership data for the complete 2012-13 season is not yet available, but for comparison's sake, take a look at where college basketball's regular season ratings stood as of 2011-12:
 

Less than 1 percent of Americans are watching college basketball from November through February. Yet the typical release month for college basketball games remains November, right before the real season tips off, and months before consumers start paying attention to the sport.
 

NCAA basketball video games typically launch a month after October's NBA video games, and by November, most players have already purchased their one basketball game for the year.

When March finally rolls around, and 6-11 percent of Americans are watching daily NCAA basketball action on TV, those November NCAA basketball games are sitting in bargain bins for $10 to $20.

Ideally, a college basketball video game should launch in February, a week or two after the Super Bowl.

Some benefits of a February launch:

• Football, America's dominant sport, is dormant
• Conference rivals clash all around the NCAA
• Many basketball fans are tired of playing their October NBA video game
• Baseball games won't launch until next month
• The flood of big-budget holiday releases has subsided

In fairness, publishers have tried launching NCAA basketball games in every conceivable month: October, November, December, January, February and March. Changing the release date has not shown any noticeable correlation to sales numbers.

An argument could be made, however, that the ever-changing release time for college basketball games has hurt the genre's long-term sales, as consumers have no ingrained "yearly purchasing ritual" like they do for Madden NFL or NBA 2K, which continue to launch in the same month, around the same week, year after year.
 

To their credit, EA Sports did experiment with a $15 downloadable edition of NCAA Basketball 09, published through Xbox Live. The game flopped, currently resting at number 384 on the all-time Xbox Live Arcade sales chart.

EA Sports' digital experiment failed because it cost about the same on its March release day ($15) as a used copy of NCAA Basketball 09, which released in November and was gathering grime in bargain bins by January.

With smarter release scheduling, an à la carte downloadable format could be an interesting way of separating the components of an NCAA game into smaller, purchasable parts, allowing the player to pay only for the modes he or she likes:

• $15 -- Offline/Online Exhibition mode all D-I NCAA teams
• $15 -- Offline/Online "Big Dance" mode
• $15 -- Offline/Online My Player/Team Up Mode
• $15 -- Offline/Online Franchise Mode
• $45 -- Full Game (Includes all Modes)

Give EA Season Ticket owners a free 48-hour trial for all modes, plus an automatic 10 percent discount, and the company might bring over a few fence-sitters who wouldn't normally consider buying an NCAA basketball game.

For 2K Sports, who already has a fine NBA product in place, their College Hoops brand could return as a downloadable, total conversion mod in the next NBA 2K game. Fan-made college mods remain popular with the PC versions of NBA 2K, so an official add-on from 2K Sports seems like a smart extension of the 2K basketball branch.
 

2K already offers a discounted "Combo Pack" that bundles MLB 2K and NBA 2K together for $80, so simply swap out the critically derided MLB series for a new College Hoops release and you have a great value to sell to basketball fans.

Arguably, NCAA basketball's days of being a full-priced, $60 retail game may be over, but with some creative thinking, plenty of opportunities remain for collegiate basketball products to bounce back into sports gaming's lineup and take advantage of consumers' March Madness.