Sports gamers are trapped inside the industry's version of The Matrix. The fact we see "new" games every year almost guarantees only so much can be done, not only to add new features but also to fix problems from the previous edition. Each year, the hole gets deeper, and it gets harder for people not to see the spoon, as it were. As problems go unfixed, and new features are added, many of them also badly in need of fixes, it gets more and more difficult to justify spending upwards of $60 every year to buy the latest version.
This is all about money, obviously. In any sort of rational scenario, we'd see "new" sports games released every two years, and in the off years a roster update and a patch to fix the most egregious errors from the old game. But that's crazy talk!
Exclusive Licensing And You
Exclusivity just plain sucks for everyone involved in the hobby. When the NFL and EA Sports collaborated (actually, EA simply outbid everyone else) to obtain the exclusive rights to all things NFL, which runs through the release of Madden 2010, it was a crippling blow to sports gamers. That was of course followed up by 2K Sports signing a weird deal with Major League Baseball, which basically only affected EA Sports by killing off its MVP Baseball series.
The irony in all of this is the deals killed the two best games in the genre. MVP Baseball was significantly better than MLB 2K, and NFL 2K was clearly better than Madden.
It's not just the NFL and MLB. NASCAR, the PGA, FIFA, the Arena League and NCAA Football are all wrapped up inside EA Sports' exclusive licenses, which guarantees that if you want to play a game inside those genres your options are limited to one game, and you're going to pony up 60 bucks to play it.
So while the NBA, NHL, NCAA Basketball and the Professional Bowling Association continue to hold out, it seems only a matter of time before those, too, fall to the collective buying force of the game industry. I know those PBA guys are holding the line, but you can only ask so much of bowlers.
Abandoning the PC
Back in the day ("the day" being the mid '90s), there was a verbal war of words being waged over 14.4 baud modems between console sports gamers and PC sports gamers.
It basically went like this: PC gamers held their noses in the air, claiming serious sports gamers played games on the PC because of trivial things like online play, mouse support with spreadsheet-like interfaces and the fact that most of the games simply had more features and better designs.
