EA and the NFL

[VortexVFX]

Maybe I'm getting the totally unlicensed and original Tecmo Bowl mixed up with the licensed Sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl.

...

Wait a second... just looked it up. NES Tecmo Bowl had real players, but not real teams. And Super Bowl had both(it apparently takes a license from the NFL to use teams, and a license from the NFL Player's Association to use players). Hence the confusion.

Adn the original arcade Tecmo Bowl game used neither.

Well Tecmo Bowl did have real players, but it had original teams which were based from the real ones.

[JB0]

Maybe I'm getting the totally unlicensed and original Tecmo Bowl mixed up with the licensed Sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl.

...

Wait a second... just looked it up. NES Tecmo Bowl had real players, but not real teams. And Super Bowl had both(it apparently takes a license from the NFL to use teams, and a license from the NFL Player's Association to use players). Hence the confusion.

Adn the original arcade Tecmo Bowl game used neither.

Well Tecmo Bowl did have real players, but it had original teams which were based from the real ones.

Just what I said.

[VortexVFX]

Ooops... i missed that. >_<

[muswp1]

Unfortunately, this is probably going to mean the Madden 2005 is going to be the last good football game from EA. When companies get a monopoly, the first thing that goes is QC because they don't care about their product anymore. Given Madden's ties to ABC/ESPN, I'm suprised he hasn't jumped ship already.

[yellowlightman]

this creates a monopoly on the single consistent best-selling video game genre.

That statement is generalizing too much. It's only the best selling genre in the US market.

Well, it helps that the US market is the largest market...

[Max Jenius]

[Max Jenius]

this creates a monopoly on the single consistent best-selling video game genre.

That statement is generalizing too much. It's only the best selling genre in the US market.

Well, it helps that the US market is the largest market...

Plus part of the reason they sell so well is because crazy people buy updates of the same exact formula. I mean... sure games are formulaic by nature... but football isn't that complicated..

So you could probably milk an engine for a lot longer...

Who knows.. I'm tired, its finals week and for some reason I'm hanging out in a thread that I don't care about. I'll take my leave now.

[areaseven]

You know, it's bad enough that EA Sports practically monopolized NASCAR gaming (Papyrus' NASCAR Racing series was better than EA's releases, but stupid Vivendi Universal pulled the plug on them for no good reason. Atari just gave up on NASCAR Heat series since the quality went downhill), but taking exclusive control of NFL gaming? That's just wrong.

On the bright side, 989 Sports won't be making any more of their retarded NFL GameDay titles for the PS2.

[Graham]

this creates a monopoly on the single consistent best-selling video game genre.

That statement is generalizing too much. It's only the best selling genre in the US market.

Well, it helps that the US market is the largest market...

Not that I really care, but I'm just curious is the North American games market really bigger than the combined Asian, European, UK and South American, i.e. the rest of the world's games market?

Anybody in the industry have some figures?

Graham

[Jawjaw]

I'm not too sure about the US being the biggest gaming market. I could be wrong, but I think Japan is stronger - at least with console games and such.

[mikeszekely]

I'm not too sure about the US being the biggest gaming market.  I could be wrong, but I think Japan is stronger - at least with console games and such.

Whooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaa no. The Japanese market is severely in the decline, and by large percentages. For mobile phone games, the Japanse market still dominates, but in terms of the individual markets, the Japanese market is smaller than both the US market and the European market today. The US market is the single largest market for videogames today, although I'm not sure about Graham's question. I think the European market might be big enough though that, combined with the Japanese market, it might be larger, but I don't know. And as for Asia, I don't know if they're even a factor. While they do get some low-quality reprints of the Japanese software, the Asian market seems to be comprised mostly of bootlegs.

Edited December 15, 2004 by mikeszekely

[JsARCLIGHT]

It's painfully long but this doccument forcasts the market and might answer graham's questions:

Clicky

But you have to "order" it (i.e. pay money).

[bandit29]

You know, it's bad enough that EA Sports practically monopolized NASCAR gaming (Papyrus' NASCAR Racing series was better than EA's releases, but stupid Vivendi Universal pulled the plug on them for no good reason. Atari just gave up on NASCAR Heat series since the quality went downhill), but taking exclusive control of NFL gaming? That's just wrong.

On the bright side, 989 Sports won't be making any more of their retarded NFL GameDay titles for the PS2.

I always thought Papyrus' NASCAR games were horrible (not that EA are the greatest). I didn't even bother with EA's NASCAR 2005 for the PS2 this year.

Most of EAs games don't appeal to me anyway including Madden even though I'm an NFL fan. SNK forever!!! lol

On one hand this deal with EA/NFL is a good business and on the other it sucks for consumers and kills healthy competition. Some might say Sega/ESPN are to blame for this. When they released their game for 19.99 that caused EA eventually to drop Madden down to 29.99(from 49.99). The NFL doesn't want to see a product with their name/logos/players/sponsors etc getting discounted and sold for cheap. Like all professional sports(except the NHL lol) they are image conscious.

[mikeszekely]

You know, it's bad enough that EA Sports practically monopolized NASCAR gaming (Papyrus' NASCAR Racing series was better than EA's releases, but stupid Vivendi Universal pulled the plug on them for no good reason. Atari just gave up on NASCAR Heat series since the quality went downhill), but taking exclusive control of NFL gaming? That's just wrong.

On the bright side, 989 Sports won't be making any more of their retarded NFL GameDay titles for the PS2.

I always thought Papyrus' NASCAR games were horrible (not that EA are the greatest). I didn't even bother with EA's NASCAR 2005 for the PS2 this year.

Most of EAs games don't appeal to me anyway including Madden even though I'm an NFL fan. SNK forever!!! lol

On one hand this deal with EA/NFL is a good business and on the other it sucks for consumers and kills healthy competition. Some might say Sega/ESPN are to blame for this. When they released their game for 19.99 that caused EA eventually to drop Madden down to 29.99(from 49.99). The NFL doesn't want to see a product with their name/logos/players/sponsors etc getting discounted and sold for cheap. Like all professional sports(except the NHL lol) they are image conscious.

Yes, they're so image conscious that they don't like the thought of NFL games being sold for less than $50, but not so image conscious that they aren't afraid to screw their fans and effectively kill the ESPN NFL series and give EA free reign to make the Madden games as crappy as they want to.

[bandit29]

You know, it's bad enough that EA Sports practically monopolized NASCAR gaming (Papyrus' NASCAR Racing series was better than EA's releases, but stupid Vivendi Universal pulled the plug on them for no good reason. Atari just gave up on NASCAR Heat series since the quality went downhill), but taking exclusive control of NFL gaming? That's just wrong.

On the bright side, 989 Sports won't be making any more of their retarded NFL GameDay titles for the PS2.

I always thought Papyrus' NASCAR games were horrible (not that EA are the greatest). I didn't even bother with EA's NASCAR 2005 for the PS2 this year.

Most of EAs games don't appeal to me anyway including Madden even though I'm an NFL fan. SNK forever!!! lol

On one hand this deal with EA/NFL is a good business and on the other it sucks for consumers and kills healthy competition. Some might say Sega/ESPN are to blame for this. When they released their game for 19.99 that caused EA eventually to drop Madden down to 29.99(from 49.99). The NFL doesn't want to see a product with their name/logos/players/sponsors etc getting discounted and sold for cheap. Like all professional sports(except the NHL lol) they are image conscious.

Yes, they're so image conscious that they don't like the thought of NFL games being sold for less than $50, but not so image conscious that they aren't afraid to screw their fans and effectively kill the ESPN NFL series and give EA free reign to make the Madden games as crappy as they want to.

No professional sport is afraid to screw their fans. It happens all the time.

[tetsujin]

Fact: all this means is that next year's football games won't have "your" team's logo in there. Big deal, get over it. If it means that much to you, well, they'll almost GUARANTEED to include a logo designer anyways, so you can make your own logo, name your own team, and VOILA! You're playing as the Vice City MegaPimps or maybe even the boring old *insert REAL city/team here*.

There's a greater concern - and that is that games without licensed NFL logos and the like won't be able to compete. If that turns out to be the case, if the mass-market is more concerned with having the real teams and players than with having a quality game, then the competing games may be produced on lower budgets, or not at all. And if EA doesn't have any serious contenders they need to compete with in the real of football videogames, they're less likely to spend a lot of effort making their games better. It's more likely they'll continue milking their existing code for as long as they can. That's the real concern, I think - that this exclusive license will result in a lack of competition, and a lack of competition will result in a lack of innovation.

[JB0]

Fact: all this means is that next year's football games won't have "your" team's logo in there. Big deal, get over it. If it means that much to you, well, they'll almost GUARANTEED to include a logo designer anyways, so you can make your own logo, name your own team, and VOILA! You're playing as the Vice City MegaPimps or maybe even the boring old *insert REAL city/team here*.

There's a greater concern - and that is that games without licensed NFL logos and the like won't be able to compete. If that turns out to be the case, if the mass-market is more concerned with having the real teams and players than with having a quality game, then the competing games may be produced on lower budgets, or not at all. And if EA doesn't have any serious contenders they need to compete with in the real of football videogames, they're less likely to spend a lot of effort making their games better. It's more likely they'll continue milking their existing code for as long as they can. That's the real concern, I think - that this exclusive license will result in a lack of competition, and a lack of competition will result in a lack of innovation.

That assumes that people really HAVE gotten dumber in the years since the SNES and Genesis.

...

Well, that or football fans are dumber than hockey fans. Personally, I don't give a crap about either game. Just not a sports person.

I'm working on the assumption that people WILL quit buying EA's games if the quality goes down the crapper, and WILL turn to unlicensed alternatives that have the features they want(I assume that the game is more important than the label).

Sidenote: the numbers I've seen say that North America is roughly 50% of the video game market. Can't recall where I saw that, though.

[Sundown]

Someone should strike back. Namely ESPN/Sega and attempt to sign an exclusive contract with the NBA and NBAPA and lock EA out of not-NBA Live 200whatever. I would seriously buy ESPN NBA every year if they were to do that, just to support that move, and to stick one in EA.

Yeah, the innovation would go downhill there too, but NBA 2kX is better now than Live ever will be for some number of years.

-Al

[MSW]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

[JB0]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

I think they assume there's actually game upgrades.

...

But it's POSSIBLE that they're all insane and think they need the new stats.

Speaking of hacking the new stats in...

I've seen a site that has Tecmo Super Bowl with 2004 stats hacked in. Why mess around with pretenders when you can have the one true video football game?

[Gunbuster]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

This guy ;; Here's what EA says what their next gen Madden will look like

[bandit29]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

Wow what insight

Why do people buy sports games? Gee... I dunno... maybe because professional sports in the US are very popular(except the NHL, Bettman you fool)?

Most sports gamers like the realistic quality of the games, new stats, new players, new rosters etc. I'm not a sports gamer but I see the appeal.

Edited December 16, 2004 by dejr8bud

[JB0]

Footnote: Midway has oannounced the first unlicensed football game.

Blitz: Playmakers. Featuring football, ultra-violence, drugs, hookers, and all the other fun stuff a licensed NFL game isn't allowed to have in it.

"Midway has hired the writer of the show "Playmakers" to develop a new title, Blitz: Playmakers. The game will feature everything the NFL hated about the TV show, including drug use, and off-the-field habits the NFL likes to pretend never happens."

...

"When IGN contacted Midway about the rumored Blitz: Playmakers, a spokesperson confirmed the game's existence and told us: "Enough of the 'No Fun League'…it's now time to talk about and prepare for the game the NFL wouldn't let anyone make…Blitz the way it should be played.""

And apparently, ultra-violence was planned for the first Blitz title but the NFL veto'ed it.

[mikeszekely]

If they'd wanted to make an ultra-violent football game to begin with, why not take the unlicensed route in the first place? Or maybe have made a game with the XFL license during its one brief season? I mean, with the Sega Sports games, they were going for realism, hence the need for the license. But I fail to see why Midway censored themselves to have it.

Anyway, a spokesperson for Take Two said that Take Two and Sega are evaluating their options for considering the 2K franchise without licenses.

[JB0]

If they'd wanted to make an ultra-violent football game to begin with, why not take the unlicensed route in the first place?

Presumably they'd already paid for the license before they realized the NFL wouldn't be amused, and weren't going to waste the cash. After that, well, why mess with a winning formula?

Or maybe have made a game with the XFL license during its one brief season? 

Because even the most retarded executive could see the XFL was ... stupid, for lack of a better word?

I mean, with the Sega Sports games, they were going for realism, hence the need for the license.  But I fail to see why Midway censored themselves to have it.

I've shared my guess. I'm interested in alternate viewpoints.

Anyway, a spokesperson for Take Two said that Take Two and Sega are evaluating their options for considering the 2K franchise without licenses.

Good. I hope they come up with something better than "run away with tail between legs."

[Smiley424]

Speaking of hacking the new stats in...

I've seen a site that has Tecmo Super Bowl with 2004 stats hacked in. Why mess around with pretenders when you can have the one true video football game?

Word, Tecmo Super Bowl is still my #1 football game to play. You could sub players, change around your playbook, there were injuries. Sure, you'd get like 100 sacks a season and throw 100 yard touchdowns, but that was all part of the fun of the game. Frosh year, me and my roommate played a couple seasons at least first semester. He'd be a NFC team and I'd be an AFC team. Sometimes we'd be good teams, sometimes we'd pick crap teams.

Sucks that EA took exclusive rights for liscensed NFL games. Sega was just putting it all together this season.

[JB0]

Sucks that EA took exclusive rights for liscensed NFL games. Sega was just putting it all together this season.

So buy Sega's next game anyways. Prove everyone wrong that this is the end of video football.

[Oihan]

So for those that think this monopoly is okay, do you all love Microsoft products too?

Edit: I know MS products are something you don't have to buy if you want to use a computer...but computer market is largely dominated by MS. I happen to use FireFox for my web browser and there are quite a few sites that I'm not able to visit unless I use Internet Explorer.... See where I'm going with this though?

Edited December 17, 2004 by Oihan

[Oihan]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

This guy ;; Here's what EA says what their next gen Madden will look like

Where did you find that picture at? It looks gorgeous.....

[JB0]

So for those that think this monopoly is okay, do you all love Microsoft products too?

Edit: I know MS products are something you don't have to buy if you want to use a computer...but computer market is largely dominated by MS. I happen to use FireFox for my web browser and there are quite a few sites that I'm not able to visit unless I use Internet Explorer.... See where I'm going with this though?

Some of the products.

I dislike the company as a whole, though. Much like I dislike EA as a whole.

I'd welcome some healthy competition in the OS market, but MS has it locked up pretty good.

And I use full Mozilla for my browser. I very rarely pop up MSIE, but yah, a few sites just don't work right in Mozilla. Usually due to sloppy coding, sometimes because they use some idiotic MS-exclusive extension.

[bsu legato]

Just to add fuel to the fire, here's a story reporting that EA has just purchased over 19% of Ubi Soft in what is described by Ubi as a "Hostile" move.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/574/574467p1.html?fromint=1

[Sundown]

Hrm. We can hope EA's recent aggressiveness with both of these actions calls attention to itself from the anti-trust watchdogs. Though I patently doubt the NFL exclusivity buyout is something anyone can or would do anythng about.

-Al

[Gunbuster]

I'm no sports gamer...actualy can't stand them...but I gots to ask, and maybe this is pointing out the obvious

Are sports gamers hooked on crack?

I mean seriously, why do people even buy these games? go to any EB games and you will find dozens of used copies of last years uber football games, and the year before, and before then too.

What, do the game CDs deteriorate that quickly that you need to update the game each and every year?

Are haveing the latest player stats so important that you are willing to fork over your hard earned cash so easily...why not find some hacked updated stats table download for say Madden 03 instead?

Or is it the graphics that drives people to by this years new game because player models now have three more polygons per butt cheek

what gives?

This guy ;; Here's what EA says what their next gen Madden will look like

Where did you find that picture at? It looks gorgeous.....

That was from Magic box. Here's pic of the next gen NFS from EA

[do not disturb]

i got to play the ESPN football game and now i know why all you guys are hating in EA....ESPN seems to be alot better overall. EA is still fun...

[mikeszekely]

Hrm. We can hope EA's recent aggressiveness with both of these actions calls attention to itself from the anti-trust watchdogs. Though I patently doubt the NFL exclusivity buyout is something anyone can or would do anythng about.

-Al

The NFL thing won't count for much, since you always have the option to play non-licensed football games, or non-football games.

But when EA starts buying out their largest competitors...?

Anyway, there's already rumors going around that EA will dump Madden and mark up their football game to $60 to make up for the ridiculous ammount they paid the NFL.