EA Signs exclusive 5-year deal with NFL, NFLPA

[ixnay]

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/041213/135991_1.html

EA Sports now has exclusive rights to create NFL-based games for consoles, PCs, and handhelds for the next five years.

Goddammit, this really, really sucks. Now that EA will have no competition, they'll have no incentive to improve Madden and they can release the same damn game every year for the next five years because they know that people are stupid and will buy the damn thing in droves no matter what.

Dammit, I really liked ESPN NFL 2k5 this year, too, and I was looking forward to next year.

EA

[Jamski]

What kind of game are the NFL rules for? Is it an RPG?

-Jam

[Maquiladora]

EA have been doing it with the FIFA series for years. Theyre spending lots of money on licenses, soundtracks and celebrity mo-cap, and the remaining budget on a shallow game. This is fine if you want to play a quick an easy arcade football game, but if thats what it is then it shouldnt have all the real-life licenses.

[Skanky Burns]

Jam

[ixnay]

Originally posted by Jamski
What kind of game are the NFL rules for? Is it an RPG?

-Jam

NFL = professional football

Sega's NFL games were finally starting to be seriously competitive, both in price and game quality. I can just see this conversation happening in EA HQ:

"What's this? Another company is making games as good as ours and they release them at half the price?! What can we do?"
"Well, we can release our games at half the price or make them better and worth the extra money."
"Nonsense. We'll make sure NO ONE else can make the same game."

[Panzeh]

NFL 2k5 has some serious player development issues in franchise mode.

[Verto]

Sports games suck anyway.

[BustaMike]

I don't play sports games, but I definitely agree that this is crap. No competition = teh suck!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, this royally sucks. NFL 2k5 was the better game.

[Asher]

Sega makes better sports games, period -- at least with World Series Baseball, NHL 2K5, and NFL 2K5.

The NFL is a pathetic organization, and you should be ashamed for being football fans.

I remembered the people they went after for showing the superbowl without a license.

Greedy pig****ers.

[St Leo]

Trademarks Copyrights Patents

[Asher]

Lunatic future computer-industry employee who wants to work for free

[Moral Hazard]

Actually If patents and copyright were eliminated. There would be more jobs in software writing as every company would have to do practically everything in house. Of course tecnology would grind to a pace not seen since the dark ages.

This is crap. I was thinking that next year would be a golden year for football games. There was finally competition. Now it's gone, this is crap.

[Dinner]

You figure these big names would learn from past mistakes and not tie their boat to just one game company. I recall how Need for Speed sign an exclusive deal with Porche to be the only company to make video games featuring Porche cars. Yep, no sooner was the deal signed and Porche got their money the PS2 came out with Grand Tourismo and Need for Speed fell off of the sales charts. NfS2 didn't do much better but Porche couldn't get out of the deal.

[Dinner]

It would be far smarter from big leagues to simply let anyone who wants to pay a royalty to make a football game. That way which ever game is popular with the kiddies always acts as free advertising for the big league.