The EA Sports NCAA Football franchise wrapped up almost ten years ago, leaving fans of college football in gaming limbo. Following debate surrounding the use of college players' likenesses, EA Sports scrapped the series after the release of NCAA Football 14. As the franchise ticks closer to a decade of nonexistence, that same swan song, NCAA Football 14, now stands as one of the single most expensive games from the PS3 and Xbox 360 era.
On eBay and similar sites, loose copies of NCAA Football 14 regularly go for over a hundred dollars, with complete copies fetching nearly twice that. Despite the official announcement of EA Sports College Football earlier this year, NCAA Football 14 still manages to rack up impressive resale numbers. In fact, NCAA Football 14 may boast the highest resale value of its era—when not factoring in limited edition or box set titles.
What Makes NCAA Football 14 So Valuable
The path to high resale value is generally straightforward. In the case of a title like Panzer Dragoon Saga, the explanation is simply scarcity. Selling around 1,000 copies in PAL regions, Panzer Dragoon Saga is extremely hard to find. The same is true of other resale juggernauts like Earthbound. For NCAA Football 14, a title that sold over a million copies, the road to a high resale value is slightly more complicated.
A major factor is that fans likely didn't expect the debate over NIL and NCAA Football games to last for almost an entire decade. When the franchise was forced to wrap up in mid-2013, college football fans almost certainly didn't anticipate waiting until the announcement of EA Sports College Football this year for a new game. So, when their enjoyment waned, NCAA Football 14 was likely quickly relegated to storage or the trash with the expectation that a title would be forthcoming in a couple of years at most.
It's also worth noting that, unlike other typical examples of high-resale games, NCAA Football 14 is a sports title. Aside from the perspective of die-hard college football fans, the franchise was never seen as irreplaceable, especially with a new Madden every single year. After a brief mourning period for their beloved franchise, it was likely easy for most fans to find a game to fill the void, which meant even more copies of NCAA Football 14 gathering dust in storage or being sent to a landfill. The combined effect is that the supply of NCAA Football 14 copies probably plummeted in a fashion that few other games ever have.
Why Fans Still Want NCAA Football 14
With the release of EA Sports College Football delayed until 2024, NCAA Football 14 will remain the sole way to experience college football in-game for at least another year or more. For this reason alone, despite the fact that it was released almost a decade ago, NCAA Football 14 still holds massive appeal for hardcore fans. Not only that, but through the dedicated effort of fan modding, the NCAA Football 14 roster has been continually updated since its debut, meaning a current college football game—albeit with dated graphics—is available to those who can get their hands on a copy.
There's also the question of its growing resale value. It remains to be seen how the return of EA Sports College Football will affect NCAA Football 14's price. Logically, it should hurt the value considerably when it launches and cements itself as the premiere college football gaming experience, but its announcement should have already caused prices to plummet and yet has had virtually no impact. If that's the case, NCAA Football 14 may be able to continue its enduring legacy as a collector's piece long after its gameplay value has departed.
NCAA Football 14 is available on PS3 and Xbox 360.
