Andrew wrote:I think you answered your own question.

Yeah, I know, but isn't it just bad publicity that they release a really crappy game of the series... They could easily give us one of the older games that were actually playable so it would attract new gamers to buy the new game to see how good the game is today... If I were to play NHL 97 and never had tried anything else from the series, I would certainly not be tempted to buy any games from the series. But if I saw NHL 98 and how good that was, I would be tempted to go to the store and see how the new games are...
NHL 97 was a big turn off... It was unplayable...
Like if they released NBA Live 2003 for free downloading... The guy who had never played it before would just look at it and say "what the hell is this crap"!?!?!? And probably think if this was in year 2003, there's a lot of work to do.
Releasing a bad game for free download is just going to push people away from the game... If they released like NHL 95 or the original or NBA Live 95, now those were "blocky days" compared to todays, but still the games were highly playable and entertaining...