With games such as this and the EA rugby and cricket series, the biggest reason for delay between ***les has been.......piracy. At the beginning of the PS2 life-cycle this wasn't a problem, towards the middle (round about 6 months after Rugby'05), this changed massively and both the PS2 and Xbox ended up with a massive number of 'modded' consoles. This had been going on for a little while before that, (much more easily with the XBox) but it was about that time that it really started to take off.
I took ages to mod my XBox, I didn't believe in it. A certain ex-moderator on here had one though, and it became a massive annoyance to me, him getting the games that I was paying $120 for, for a $5 rental. He even started "borrowing" my games and burning them onto his XBox. I started saying "Well maybe seeing as renting these would cost you $5 a pop and you've done nearly 13 of my collection, you could put some towards me buying a legitimate ***le?" . Well, I never saw him round at my house for a good number of weeks after that, he never mentioned wanting one of the my ***les again.
Greed? Yep, big time. So eventually I got corrupted too and got mine modded. I wasn't going to be a fool for everyone elses benefit. That was the only reason though.
I remember Rugby '06 coming out, I had it downloaded about 6 or 7 days before release. It was simply awesome. The best since JLR in my opinion. By that stage I was seeing the regular return of my ex-mod friend. The day I downloaded it he wanted to come around and get it off me straight away. I let him too. Under one condition, that we both must buy this ***le as soon as it was out. Being quite a wiggly worm at times, he suggested buying it when it went down to budget pricing. I said "no we have to support these ***les or they'll stop making them".
I bought my copy and never saw his. I pretty much know he never did buy it. The general point of all this is that the milking of the studios udders who make these ***les by pirates with no conscience is what gradually has killed the cricket and rugby series so far. Thats why the Xbox never has had the continuance of software that the PS2 has had. Innovations such as the slimline PS2 made the smaller consoles slightly more difficult to mod and I believe a significantly lower number were done.
Luckily there is no real way to pirate the PS3 ***les as yet, so that just leaves Xbox 360. I sincerely hope that all TRF members who may own a modded 360 remember what has happened in the past and buy any cricket or rugby ***le that may happen, on release day. Geez, buy two if you can. Our favourite franchises simply can't endure a piracy hit like Fifa can.
