EA Sports = NFL

[Durango53]

Electronic Arts, the leading maker of sports video games, signed an exclusive five-year contract with the National Football League and the NFL Players Association, deals that will give the company sole possession of the licensed football video game business.


The partnership, which will commence with the publishing of Electronic Arts' Madden game next August, eliminates the competitive battle EA endured this year with ESPN's NFL 2K5 game, a joint venture between Sega and Take-Two Interactive. Without the use of team and player names, generic games have struggled for survival in the current environment.

[cxlx]

Holy Crap!!! Can you do that? Isnt that monopolizing? I mean, I love EA games, but this is insane. Its not like those other games are "real " competition anyways. Sega had to drop all their games to $20 to even compete.

[00_Agent]

I'm a little surprised by this. It's not technically a monopoly in the old fashioned sense, but I don't like it anyway. Competition is always good for increased standards and lower prices, who knows what the hell is going to happen now.

00

[Greymire]

I agree. This is horrible for the Video games market. You almost have to hope a good collegiate game will come out to offer competitition. I see prices skyrocketing and not coming down.

[00_Agent]

Unfortunately, I can't help but agree.

00

[PrimeTime]

Being a football gamer myself, that news is a little dissappointing to me. Since EA will have no competition for the next five years, I would expect little to no improvements over titles from now until the negotiation reaches an end. Madden always has been my favorite, but now EA has really no incentive to update...let's just hope they have a little heart to give to us fans, that is, if anyone remembers us.

[Durango53]

I think they will update they would have to or no one would buy the game for we could just make the drafted guys and have no problems. Heck that is what I do anyway now.

But I am with Greymire it is the college gamers that suffer and who knows ESPN or some other one might deside to put the pressure on by making a kick ass college game and forcing the isuue that way. :notme:

[redsoxman]

I'm not really suprised by this. I always saw EA Games superior to all the rest when it came to football games.