Ryan Geddes writes:
"To me, the sport of NASCAR is a bit like classic Russian literature. I respect it, but I don't really claim to understand it. I can never keep all the characters straight, and I eventually just fall asleep during the dull bits.
There is drama and excitement to be found in NASCAR but it's not easily translated into videogame fun, which may be why Electronic Arts, sole owner of the sport's game licensing rights, has struggled with the franchise in recent years. People love the sport because it's an American institution peppered with friendly, colorful personalities who just happen to be highly skilled race car drivers. The races can be thrilling at times, but the cars all look the same, only turn left most of the time and can remain separated by just a couple seconds for most for the race. That's a recipe for a pretty dull videogame experience."
In the economic hard times of late, many industries have been greatly effected. One, in particular, is NASCAR. Stock car racing is one of the biggest sports in the country. Now I know many people will argue with that because they might not watch NASCAR, but just look logically; the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama holds 125,000 people, the Daytona 500 is one of the most watched single day events every year, right behind the Super Bowl, and sponsors pay millions of dollars just to get their logo on a car knowing that if that car wins, the fans buy the product. But recently, with companies not willing to shell out so much money, sponsors have gone down, ticket sales have dropped and the revenue of NASCAR in general is low. And it doesn't stop there…
I am not entirely sure how licensing works but if I recall correctly GT5 bought the Nascar license but again I don't know if that affects EA drastically or not. You would think it probably is related somehow...
Oh well, they always rehashed the same game every year. Atleast in GT5, fans of these games will be racing in 1080p glory with the most photorealistic graphics as they go round and round.
This week's "What They've Been Playing" features discussion of Splosion Man, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, Madden 10, Battlefield 1943, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a Darklord, Nascar 09, Hour of Victory, and much more. They follow that up with some gaming news including the announcement of Sam Raimi as director of the World of Warcraft movie and the record-breaking sales of Battlefield 1943.
Pictures, videos, and little notes from the event. Guests included Tiger Woods, John Cena, Derek Jeter, Reggie Bush, Denny Hamlin, Jameer Nelson Major Nelson, and a random appearance by Jimmy Kimmel's parking lot security Guillermo.
As long as EA is doing Nascar games then it will continue to fall short.I wish Papyrus was still around because there graphics were as good as EA's 10 years ago as compared to EA's graphics now. Any old school players who played Papyrus(Sierra)racing games on the cpu back in the 90's know what im talking about.....