R.I.P. EA Sports NCAA Basketball Series

I tend to consider myself a casual gamer. I don't really get into games like Call of Duty, Ninja Assassin or Halo. But I do enjoy me some EA Sports games, especially games like Madden, NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball. That's why I found this news particularly disheartening:

Looking over the list of list of Electronic Arts titles planned for release during the next fiscal year, one sports franchise is notably absent. Today EA Sports senior director of communications David Tinson confirmed that NCAA Basketball has fouled out of the lineup. "We do not have an NCAA Basketball game in development at this time, and we’re currently reviewing the future of our NCAA Basketball business," he said. "This was a difficult decision, but we remain a committed partner to the NCAA and its member institutions."

With 2K Sports dropping their college basketball game, EA's decision to drop the NCAA Basketball series leaves no video game on the market for the college basketball fan. Sure, the gameplay for EA's NCAA Basketball was nowhere even close to the gameplay for a title like NBA Live. I never understood why though. If you are going to program all sorts of nifty moves and dunks for the NBA, why not just port that gameplay over to your NCAA title? I guess EA no longer wanted to invest in reprogramming the game when the NCAA tournament moves to 96 teams.

Still, this is sad news for the NCAA basketball, video game junkie. I guess my xBox 360 copy of NCAA March Madness 08 will become something of a collector's item. I'll be stuck beating the 2008 version of the Harvard Crimson by 45 (virtual payback) and shooting way too many 3s with #32 for the Eagles; a player that looks remarkably similar to Johnny Oates but isn't really Johnny Oates (lest I get in trouble with the NCAA higher ups).