Check out news on NCAA Basketball posted by cdj from NCAAStrategies.com talking about the probable end of EA’s NCAA Basketball Franchise.  It would really be a shame not to have any option for a college basketball title next year.

Today, EA released their third quarter fiscal year 2010 results. Included in the document was a schedule for key gaming titles to be released in fiscal year 2011. All EA Sports gaming mainstays were listed except for one – NCAA Basketball 11. Widely speculated for weeks, this all but confirms the end of the franchise known as March Madness and rebranded in 2008 with NCAA Basketball 09. While the game made significant strides in the last two years, the franchise was not able to overcome the traditionally poor sales that college basketball games receive as well as the stigma surrounding the franchise after numerous years of mediocre games. On February 2, a member of Operation Sports (Hey_Rebby) claimed that a CLC memo confirmed EA Sports was pulling the plug on the franchise for NCAA Basketball 11, but may consider making NCAA Basketball 12 and the game every other year. While the initial claim seems to now be proven correct, it seems unlikely for the studio to sink money into a moribund franchise every other year when they could not make it successful on a yearly basis. The decision appears it may have been made during the development cycle of NCAA Basketball 10, as a television commercial was filmed in April with Kentucky head coach John Calipari that has never aired. Shortly after release, game developers were shifted to NBA Live and/or other projects and no patch was ever developed. Despite the lack of marketing and attention for the title, in just under three months since it’s release NCAA Basketball 10 has sold approximately 52,000 more copies on the 360/PS3 than NCAA Basketball 09, which has been out for 15 months. The end of NCAA Basketball would place it in the already crowded college sports gaming graveyard, joining such franchises as MVP NCAA Baseball, NCAA College Football 2K, NCAA Gamebreaker, NCAA Final Four, and College Hoops 2K. The lone remaining officially licensed major college video game is now NCAA Football. This would also mean that in recent years sports gaming giant EA Sports has lost or dropped their baseball, NASCAR, and college basketball franchises. The College Hoops 2K franchise ended after contract talks with the Collegiate Licensing Company broke down in January 2008. It was believed that 2K Sports was no longer able and/or willing to pay the necessary licensing fee to the CLC & NCAA. With no company producing a yearly collegiate basketball video game title, discussion will likely turn to asking if the NCAA/CLC would lower their licensing fee to allow 2K Sports to resume the franchise. With the issues 2K Sports has had as well, it seems unlikely they would be able to afford establishing their development team for the game plus the licensing fee, especially when facing the poor sales college basketball video games have always suffered. It appears that 2K Sports & EA Sports have placed all of their proverbial basketball gaming eggs into their NBA titles and that is where gamers must now turn for a new basketball game fix.