Why is it taking SO long for a CFL video game?!

NEED CFL GAME NOW!

Yes you are right about the 100$ but the point still stands!
Now you learn some common business sense!
You,nor any company is going to invest any money for anything less than the maximum return!

I will ask you again!
If this is such a great investment, why has no-one done it yet?
Its a simple answer......It's not a good investment!

Here is EAsport's address and phone number!
If anyone is so sure that they are going to make money call them and explain it to them

P.O. Box 7578 San Mateo, CA 94403-7578
Phone (415) 572-9448
Let us know how it works out!

...rpaege....Third, did it ever occur to you that the guy made a typo?!....I'll remember to be as snotty the next time you do so....

....barnes, what the hell are you saying half the time?!....I see the logic contained in my post has avoided your meticulous argument....

....back in 30....

Redandwhite, you think that a game wouldn't sell 4K copies? lol.

on a one time release, not a yearly release.

I'd go with 30K units per team + other units sold to cities like London/Windsor, Ottawa, QBC, Atlantic Canada. combining for another 60K

Maybe people in Calgary don't care about the CFL.
Maybe no one you know would buy a game.

But I can think of a decent amount of people that would get the game.

There are alot of fans who can't get to games, Alot of bandwagon fans, alot of football game fans, who may just like the challenge of a 3 down game.

How well does a hockey game sell in canada?

How can that game sell so much when there are is 18K people in attendance in the 6 canadian markets?
that ends up being under 120K?
How many copies EA sports 2006 or 2007 sell in canada alone?
300K-400K? on a game that is released yearly, always with huge bugs... it sells enough to be 50% of it's average TV audience?(regular season)
right there if that's how it works a CFL game in canada would sell atleast 200K(50% it's average TV audience)

How many Gamers are in canada? 2-3M, maybe 4M
There were atleast 2M consoles sold in a 2 year period in canada.
so if 20-25% of gamers have just an interest in a football game, doesn't need to the CFL. they can buy it.
Although to think 100% of sales would be in canada is also wrong, there should be sales down south, Border towns/Baltimore. that could add 10-20K games sold.

Down south just bill it as 3-down football.
That is how the Arena league sells, with it's rule difference, no one cares about the arena league itself but a game that much different then NCAA/Madden is interesting.

I still stick, 300K+ copies sold in canada, maybe up to 500K.
I'm just going by the fairly large number of people I know who would buy the game and don't regularly attend CFL games.

Oh please. Is he your little buddy or something? He is quite capable of defending himself, and please do feel free to correct me anytime I make a mistake (which is fairly often). Though I must point out that I normally double check my numbers before I post them, or I don’t post them at all. And if you think reciprocal snottiness is justified then be please be my guest. Just keep in mind that next time it might be YOU who is accused of it.

ro1313: Don’t sweat it man. Mistakes happen. And your original point is well taken. I just don’t agree that is the issue here. Gaming companies are in the business of developing games - not banking. It doesn’t necessarily matter that the profit is small. It just matters that there is a profit. It might matter if the effort to make a small profit takes resources away from a high profit project, but as I pointed out previously, EA already has done the lions share of the development and they should be able to produce a CFL game relatively easily. After that it’s a question of marketing and distribution. The CFL can help with both of those and I’m sure the Commish is all over that.
If it’s a sound business decision it will get done. And that is the ultimate question. None of us here can really know the answer. That it hasn’t been done YET doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be. There are many kinds of co-op deals that are possible (on field advertising within the game would be one example of that).

...I always like snotty replies...typos happen, you just don't need to jump down a guys throat when they do, cool?...

...barnes, I still think your argument is based on numbers you have pulled out of the air with little to absolutely no backup....which EA or any other software company would not react to whatsoever...as far as your claim that Calgary cares little for the CFL because I personally don't think a CFL video game would sell, well, stupid....thats all I can say...

The CFL video game might be an easy sell to a core group of CFL fans, but for it to sell 30K in each city, it would have to appeal to a wider section of the population. I dont really see that happening, after the novelty of a CFL video game wears off. In a place like Regina, 3 people out of 20 would have to buy the game-- sorry but dont see that as feasible. Even if you include Saskatoon , Moose Jaw and Prince Albert(about another 300K), to sell that many games is a stretch.

...a 'stretch' is being diplomatic.....five hundred thousand in it's first release is laughable...

....if it were profitable it would have already happened....and if Cohon can convince a software company to make one power to him, but it'll cost the league money....call it advertisement, call it marketing to the youth, whatever you want to it'll be capital that IMO was mispent...and I 'game' so don't try the 'you don't matter' angle...

The argument that if it were profitable it would have been done already is just not tenable, sorry. Assuming a gaming company has even looked at the possibility is assuming too much.

There are WAYS to make games profitable without HUGE sales. Please read what I have already written about this.

Profit may also not be the only important thing here. Profit is not always the point of marketing.

As long as the game can be made inexpensively enough, and there are ways to achieve that, then profit might not be the only reason to make one.

Marketing is also about growing your market, not just immediate profit.

...then we'll agree to disagree....

In order to make a game you develop $250,000(est)a game then you have to protect the potential product,$250,000- (est)produce-market $250,000(est) distribution $250,000(est) - 1st edition a limited run of 16,000 - (Est) it would cost 1 million to put out 16,000 units. - each additional edition would be - cheaper to make - if 100,000 were sold CFL could reap millions$$$ ie- CFL 2010, cfl 2011 ,cfl 2012 etc-

The CFL video would just not sell. You could tweak Madden to include a CFL type game with the league's teams added in, but as a seperate game, the market just isnt there.

Exactly Sambo. The resources already exist to produce a game cheaply. And it doesn't really matter that it sells a whole lot. The point is marketing not necessarily fabulous profit. If it broke even that would be good enough, and that should be easily doable given your plan or similar and including some co-op deals with advertisers (for on-field logos and whatnot).

....I agree, the point of marketing is not to obtain fabulous profit....the point of marketing is to get your name out there....the point of a business is to make fabulous profit...unless your business is non-profit, which software companies aren't....

I don't think the issue is about EA Sports (or anyone) being able to make the game. I just can't see how anyone would pay money for a football game with 8 teams in it. Boring. Compare your potential CFL game to Madden 2007... no contest. Even if you used the same engine and gameplay the fact that there are only 8 playable team options sucks. Second, no company worth anything would market to such a small niche. You are not going to sell 30k units in each CFL city. PS3 has sold 1.6 million units in North America. XBOX 360 4.5 million units sold, Wii 2.7 million units sold.of that your biggest Canadian market is Toronto. If you took a poll of how many die hard CFL fans actually owned one of these units I'm willing to bet it's not going to be a large enough market segment.
You simply don't have enough of the market to warrant the production of the game.

also consider this:

It would negatively impact Madden sales in Canada.
There is a large enough market for NFL games in Canada. If Canada wasn't interested in the NFL, they would consider it, but more Canadians watch NFL than CFL.

ask or Phone 2K sports madden bought put rights so they couldn't make anymore NFL video games and they usually sell games at low cost 29.99 for NFL 2k5 when it 1st came out and i am sure they would not mind that at all.

Please back up this statement with references.

OK - I’ll try

CBC and TSN’s avg ratings were 438,000 and 376,000 per broadcast - CBC 2004 # TSN 2005/6 #'s
TSN’s NFL ratings for 2006 avgeraged $374,000
Now add CBS, NBC and Global’s Canadian #'s…

The NFL’s broadcasts more games per week to a larger number of homes… it’s really not that complicated.
The NFL has more viewers/ fans than the CFL has.

Your statistics do not include Quebec viewers, so they are therefore inaccurate.

"...pro football is the No. 2 sport among Canadians and the CFL is favoured by more people than the NFL."

"Nineteen per cent of Canadians said they follow the CFL, compared to 13 per cent for the NFL."

"...approximately 80% of Canadian football fans follow the CFL and about 55% follow the NFL"

Source: Reginald Bibby, survey for the University of Lethbridge, 1995 (via The Canadian Press, June 8, 2006).

I don't know about you but I'm more inclined to believe the University of Lethbridge than (incomplete) ratings pulled out of thin air, with no supporting documentation, then extrapolated to an unknown and undocumented number.

Yeah I read that on wikipedia as well.. lol

Please....

What I'm saying is tv numbers don't lie. Advertisers and video game producers aren't stupid... they go with the biggest bang for the buck. A survey from 1995 still doesn't account for the greater revenues and the television ratings generated by the NFL in Canada.

My ratings number come straight from the sources - CBC, TSN and NFL.com. I just didn't think I would have to spoon feed you.

You can believe what you want. Look I'm a fan of the game but I don't for a second beleive it's a bigger draw than the NFL... hence there's a Madden 2007 title and not CFL 2007 sold in Canadian stores.