Sony Cans Most 989 Sports Titles For 2004

blueZhift writes "GameSpy reports that Sony's 989 Sports division announced today that NFL GameDay, NCAA GameBreaker, NBA ShootOut, and NCAA Final Four for PlayStation 2 will not be updated for the 2004-2005 season. Hmmm, with Microsoft recently shelving their sports lineup for 2004 and EA Sports games allegedly coming over to Xbox Live, one can only wonder if 989's announcement is EA-related as well."

Well, it makes sense

[the_riaa]

I firmly believe that competition is a good thing, but let's face it folks, the only two companies putting out good sports games these days are Sega and Electronic Arts. 989 had good games early in the PS1 life-cycle, when they were taking advantage of the Sony machine's graphics better than the other guys. Guess what? EA caught up with them. And vastly surpassed them. If it weren't for Sega resurrecting their Sports department with the 2K games on the Dreamcast, EA would be the only name out there, other than Midway and those dopey NFL Blitz/MLB Slugfest games. Sports games are big business, but if you're 989, only selling games for ONE of the consoles (unlike EA and Sega), and you're fighting for that marginal percentage of the market share called third or forth place on that ONE console, then the well runs dry pretty quick. I applaud 989 for still making PS1 games, I always like to see old systems get love, but the creativity, the enhancements, and the feel and play of their games has taken a nose-dive over the past few years. 989 Sports, hate to see you go, but honestly, you won't be missed.

Maybe...

[BigZaphod]

Perhaps it will free up some funds for some original game concepts instead of the same old crap over and over and over...

Well, one can hope, anyway.

Not EA Related

[illuminata]

It's poor quality related. The sports titles produced by 989 Sports always came up inferior, not just in the graphics department, but in all of the other departments as well. That includes gameplay, where it always fell short every year in every sport.

When you create a bad game, word spreads very fast and nobody bites at it. When you create a bad game in a series year after year, people don't trust the series anymore. And when you do that with multiple series, people lose trust in the developer. Had 989 been able to create quality sports titles, or at least learn from their mistakes like Sega did with World Series 2K, 989 wouldn't be in the situation that they're in now. But, 989 didn't even try. EA and Sega just gave them competition. They did not force them to create mediocre games.

Not for consumers, it doesn't

[pommaq]

You're right, competition IS a good thing, and this move will make a bad situation even worse. EA already has a stranglehold on the sports market and we all know what EA Sports means: rubber-stamp sequels with updated graphics and rosters, licensed pop music, and no creative additions to gameplay since somewhere around 1999. I play mostly footie games, and having played FIFA since 94 or 95 somewhere (before they even went quasi-3d and had real rosters) I used to think that FIFA was as good as it got. That is, until I hit upon Sega's Winning Eleven [konamityo.com] series while looking for a decent footballer to import for my 'cube. I could understate things by saying that it was an eye-opener, but to be honest it made me realize that EA has been making gobs of money selling absolute shit for quite a while now. It certainly works if you haven't tried anything else, but I can't even play the FIFA series anymore - it's like trying to eat rocks for dinner after getting used to exquisite three-course meals.

Simply put, sports games can be vastly improved with some creativity and innovation, and EA is the one company you can trust to never ever EVER innovate. They've proved time and time again that the only thing they care about is the bottom line: they'll chew through developers and brands like snacks, release what should rightly be patches as add-ons, and sacrifice everything new and creative on the altar of "hey, it sold well enough last time" and glitzy graphics. It's painful to see. And even if this particular competitor made crap games too (haven't played any of their games, so I wouldn't know) it WAS competition. Maybe this makes sense for Sony, but every move that strengthens EA's sports dominance will shaft you - the consumer - in the end.

Re:Maybe...

[SamSim]

It's not Sega and EA's fault that people keep buying the updates of the same game over and over and over. It's irritating, but it's profitable.

Re:Maybe...

[illuminata]

Being a jock as well as a geek, maybe I can shed some light as to why some people buy sports games every year.

To a geek, it would appear as if it was the same junk with just some minor tweaks. But, to a sports gamer, they are anything but.

With all of the roster moves made during the season and in the off-season, a player wants to have their game's roster be as current as possible. A current roster keeps that sense of realism for a player. That's the largest reason why one would pick up the latest title of a sports game every year. Remember, a game also has to keep current with new teams, stadiums, stadium names, stadium modifications, team moves, rule changes, etc.

Don't forget, there's also new features added each year that might not seem like much to a geek. Madden 2004 just recently created a mode for one to simulate owning a team, detailed down to setting food prices to generate revenue. ESPN NFL Football lets you have your own "crib" for you to purchase things for, including a jukebox so that you can play your own music and an air hockey table. You can't forget things such as new training modes, gameplay modes, and other things of that nature.

Improvements are another big justification for a yearly upgrade. Things such as bettering how the defense back handles a wide receiver in football or how a suicide squeeze is handled in baseball all help add to the realism of the video game. That's what most sports gamers want; being able to come as close as they can to having a realistic sports experience.

You need an appreciation of sports to be able to understand why people justify a yearly video game purchase. Without that appreciation, it certainly may seem as if those games are indeed crap. However, there are a whole slew of people who appreciate sports, and that's why you'll continue to see sports video games over and over.

...Just not as many from 989, because they realized that they weren't too good at making them.