The turnaround required to Madden 21 coins make a game every season is more unsustainable now than it ever was. MTX are being adopted by a sizable proportion of their playerbase, making it rather difficult for developers to justify not including them.View , this is the largest issue here.
I think you would be shocked at how much material that is"too hard" to accomplish would be miraculously fixed if the license was opened fully and they had some competitions demanding them.I don't disagree, but it's also worth acknowledging that we already know what happens when there's competition between major publishers within a significant sports licence. EA has been making NBA Live on-and-off for the past few years, always attempting to undercut 2K's position on the marketplace.
The reason it has been on-and-off is since the games market so badly, EA has decided multiple times to not discharge a year's awarded NBA Live match - in hopes that another season of dev time will make them competitive.They've been doing this dance for an entire console generation, and it hasn't done much.
Even though NBA Live is largely nice as a basketball match, and $20 cheaper at retail - 2K remains basically running unopposed as the biggest basketball game around.The same thing happens between FIFA and Pro Evo - Konami provides a less exploitative football sport, but audiences go with the brand they know.Having additional competition within the NFL licence may shake things up - but history hasn't really suggested that Madden will suddenly become amazing when new players enter the marketplace. That said, I hope the NFL believes ending exclusivity. There is undoubtedly a space for more football than
only Madden - particularly if a different player aims to get a more arcade-like experience, instead of chasing simulation.
I do not know about competition making EA or 2k change. EA got back into basketball games a couple years ago and rather than getting better I'd say NBA 2k got even worse then it was in terms of quality.NBA Live has been a trash heap of a game though. 2K did not feel really threatened with their entry, of course.It's also the same scenario with FIFA & Professional Evo.