The Curse of Quality (follow-up)
I posted last week about NBA Street being EA's highest-quality sports franchise, and speculated that it was due to the game not being jammed out every year.I thought this was a natural occurrence.
That was incorrect, and thanks to DQ reader Schleicher for pointing it out:
There is more to NBA Street releasing a new game every two years besides the fact that they don't have roster changes every year. Midway also has the rights to create an arcade basketball game. That series is the NBA Ballers series. Every other year NBA Street will have a game released, and NBA Ballers will have a game released, alternating years. This is a part of the contract with the NBA. I don't doubt that if EA and Midway had the rights to release a new game every year, they would.
He also mentioned the number of releases of NFL Street, which saw v2 released eleven months after the orginal. Fifa Street also saw a sequel in just over twelve months.
That NBA licensing deal runs until 2011, by the way. In addition to the alternating arcade-style game rights held by EA and Midway, EA, Take-Two, and Sony have licenses to release a "simulation" game every year.
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