The idea of another Mutant Football League game of some sorts sounds interesting right about now.

i dunno about mutant league, one of the main appeals of the 2K series was its realism in gameplay. mutant football would not breed a realistic football game.Itll be interesting to see what Sega does in retaliation. They do have options. 1)Make NCAA their feature football game 2)Make a pretend or alternate football game 3)Buy NFL rights from EA (Maybe EA would get a share of every VC game bought).

Unfortunately guess who created Mutant Football League and probably own the rights...........



YUP EA!

I hear they all ready have a commercial created....

[deep voice]

EA Sports presents Madden 2006 ...

only $89.99

and you'll pay it because you have no other alternative

ha ha ha ha haaaaa!

[/deep voice]

I don't think I've ever forgiven them for that. I guess 2K5 was my last football game for a while, although it doesn't get much better anyway.

Anyone remember the movie with Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis? The Last Bou Scout?

Sega could just use their engine and make a Grand Theft Football game?

Complete with guns, steroids, beer bottles, fan fights, prostitues as cheerleaders, and bookies so you can bet on the games.

I'm still buying ESPN no matter what and even if they names aren't in the game there are ways of loading that information in with an Action Replay device. SOme people do the dirty work and all you have to do is download the rosters. That's how I complete my ESPN College Hoops 2K5 rosters.

EA Already makes crap football games. Lets hope 2k5 does roster updates for the rest of time !!! EA tried pulling a Vince McMahon, when competiton gets too close the only way to beat them is TO buy them out. Does anyone think ESPN 2K5 will remain online for a couple yrs? Or will it shut down when Madeen comes out next yr?

Weekly Update

16/12/2004

Europe has never really embraced the American sports, which might explain why so few people here have paid much attention to the extraordinary struggle which has taken place in North America in the past six months between Electronic Arts and Take Two Interactive - one which ended with a shock announcement this week that has left much of the industry in the USA reeling.

For those who haven't been following the history, Take Two signed a deal with SEGA earlier this year which made the two companies into co-conspirators on the ESPN series of sports games, which have been the main rivals to the EA Sports pantheon for some time - albeit existing in a very distant second place to their competitor.

The new alliance produced one key idea - dropping the prices of all its ESPN titles to $19.99 in order to grab market share and put pressure on EA, which continued to stick firmly to the line that there was no need for a budget price point in the sports market. NPD sales data proved Take Two's point, though; the ESPN games gained significant ground on EA, and eventually, last month, the publishing giant was forced to drop its own prices in order to ensure that it remained on top of the field in the run up to Christmas.

It was hardly the massive defeat for EA that some commentators have chosen to characterise it as, but it was certainly a nasty knock - proving that with solid titles, aggressive pricing and good marketing, the industry leader can be challenged even on its most secure home territory. Or so we all thought - but events this week have showed that EA is not the largest publisher in the games industry for no reason, and that it's not afraid to use its size to crush competitors when they become a threat to its dominance.

A joint announcement from Electronic Arts and the National Football League revealed that EA has opened its purse strings and signed up an exclusive five year deal with the NFL and with its Players' Association, effectively locking all of the company's competitors out of making NFL games for that period - which extends well into the life cycle of the next generation consoles. The deal must easily have been one of the most expensive in EA's history, but given the prize at stake - namely the exclusive rights to the most popular sport in the USA - the stock market judged the (undisclosed) price to be worth it, and EA's share price rocketed on the news.

The move is a stunning one - a clearer and more comprehensive end to the battle with Take Two simply could not be imagined. In one fell swoop, EA has demonstrated that it is the most powerful and dangerous company in the industry, destroying its competitors product ranges with the sheer power of its wallet. Reaction to the deal, unsurprisingly, has been largely negative - however clever it may be in business terms, there's a distinct feeling that winning the sports game battle by pulling the rug out from under a competitor's feet in this way effectively amounts to bully-boy tactics on EA's part.

Take Two, in particular, is furious at the deal, pointing out in a strongly worded statement this week that the people who will suffer in the end will be consumers, who will be denied a decent choice in the NFL game genre for the next half-decade, and the NFL themselves, who may well find themselves tied to EA in a not entirely advantageous way when the deal finishes in five years time, since it's quite possible that no other publisher will be interested in picking up the reins at that point given the cost of developing a new NFL game series from scratch.

Naturally, when Take Two talks about consumer choice, what it really means is "the consumer's choice to give money to us rather than to EA," but the firm has a point regardless. This year's battle drove software prices down and, if extended for a couple more years, would probably have led to significant innovation and development in the American football game genre. While the falling prices don't help the industry much - and can't seem attractive to the NFL either, which may have provided some impetus for the EA deal - both of these now-eliminated factors are good for consumers.

Left to its own devices, with no competitors and only its own previous games to top in the quality stakes, both the pricing and the quality of the NFL games could well suffer. EA wins either way - but both the NFL and its fans may find themselves wishing that they'd seen past the software giant's chequebook and allowed the market to be driven by healthy competition, not by purchased monopoly.


Chris

Thats a very good article. I dont play/buy sports games, but my brothers do, and I agree this news stinks bad. I guess I havn't really followed news/opinions on EA for awhile- are they pretty hated in general? I just remember them for Medal of Honor on PS1 (which I've just started Rising Sun and its awful) and SSX Tricky which I liked. I really liked that ESPN had the really low price point (because I won't pay $50 for a game) and forced a battle, but the outcome stinks for them and the fans. Hopefully something can be worked out.....

The scary part of this is what happens next? Does EA make attempts to make similar deals with MLB, NBA, NHL ??? It certainly could happen.

I guess it is ok to have a monopoly in this business segment. For the next 5 years, its Madden or nothing. Seems to me that it would not be legal to do this.

Sega is hard at work trying to sign exclusive deals with the NBA and MLB. Maybe this will make them flinch.

I've always preferred the gameplay of Madden to the Sega games (including this year), however, I've always purchased and played the hell out of both games. While not the disasterous news that some are talking about, it's not exactly good news either. I guess in a dream scenario, EA could hire some of Take Two's staff and create a game that plays like Madden, but looks like, and has the slick interface of 2Kx. But that's just a football game fantasy...

I doubt anyone could cry "Monopoly" since it is within the NFL's rights to choose who they license themselves to. Just because WWE doesn't allow two different companies to do two different wrestling games on the same system doesn't mean that they created a monopoly, right?

There are two things I dread:
1. EA (or anyone but Sega, really) grabs the NBA license. I like NFL 2K, but I can live with Madden... I can't live with NBA Live, though. It's improving, but IMHO ESPN is just so much better. It would mean no more NBA Street, though...
2. Microsoft or Sony or someone besides EA or Sega gets an exclusive license for one of the major sports. If 989 was the only company making sports games, I'd cry.

Wow. This deal is really, really shitty. Thankfully, and I say this not to throw salt in anyone's wounds, but thankfully, EA got this deal and not Sega. I would have absolutely died if I would have had to play ESPN Football, and Madden was nowhere in sight. I understand that there is a great deal of people on the opposing side that feel the exact same way, and I feel for them. I really hope this doesn't stretch into the NBA or NCAA...

That would be a nightmare.

This to me this is not a issue whether Madden or ESPN is better, The issue is this is a monopoly agreement. Let the consumer decide which to buy. With EA taking over the waterhole, What's to stop them from passing on the cost of this purchase on to the consumer and what about competition? I have never seen Madden and NBA LIVE price drop so fast. I tell you this don't expect to have such a quick drop next year.


Sega/Take-two should take EA/NFL to court to kill this contract. I just don't understand why the NFL would want to cutoff SEGA. It's better to have two customers instead of one lone customer.

Not really a big football game fan, but I always did prefer the NFL 2k# series, too bad.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp.../nfl_midway_dc

Midway Developing Mature-Rated Football Video Game

Thu Dec 16,12:53 PM ET Entertainment - Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Midway Games Inc. plans to publish a "mature"-rated pro football video game with the kinds of violence and excess shunned by the National Football League, the company said on Thursday.

The game, called "Blitz: Playmakers," is being designed with the help of a writer from the now-canceled ESPN series "Playmakers," which the NFL condemned for its behind-the-scenes portraits of player drug use and mayhem.

Since the NFL granted an exclusive license to video games rival Electronic Arts Inc., Midway said, it can create its own football game that stretches the limits of what video game players have seen before from sports titles.

"No longer bound to the NFL license, there will be no league restrictions on content and gamers will finally experience what makes playing a football video game really fun: off-field controversies, dirty hits, excessive celebrations and much more," Midway marketing chief Steve Allison said in a statement.

"Blitz: Playmakers," featuring a fictional league and fictional teams and players, is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2005, a Midway spokesman said.

On Monday, EA, the NFL and the marketing arm of its players' union announced a five-year deal that gives EA the exclusive right to NFL player names and likenesses, team names and colors, and stadiums.

The deal came after EA's "Madden NFL" pro football game franchise faced its first serious challenge in years, from the "ESPN NFL 2K5" game from Sega Sammy Holdings and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

By pricing their game at $20 as against $50 for "Madden," Sega and Take-Two were able to garner a market share of about 40 percent this year on a units-sold basis, far better than ever before. In response, EA cut its prices on sports games sharply, which helped "Madden" sales last month.

Midway previously held an NFL license, though it did not produce a football game this year. Its "Blitz" franchise was long the edgiest of all the NFL-licensed games, though the last version sold poorly after the league cracked down on Midway and the company toned the game down.


Chris

Again, while I agree with the sentiment, I don't see how you can legally prove that they're creating a monopoly. They're not preventing people from creating other videogames, or even other football games, just games based on their license, and they can do whatever they want with their license. If the NFL wanted to sign an exclusive television deal with, say, Spike TV, and didn't allow NFL games to be broadcast anywhere else, there's nothing stopping them from doing it. It wouldn't be a wise decision, but they can do what they like. Am I misunderstanding the law, here?

Midway.

I'm sure people will be scrambling to make NCAA Football games next season... That's all they can hope to do.

I have always been a huge fan of Madden but I think that NFL2K was the best thing that ever happenned to Madden because it forced them to step it up.

Hopefully the loss of the license will do the equivalent for NFL2K. No one has said that GTA sucks because they don't use licensed cars (okay, I underestimate fanboy rants, but nobody outside of these types of forums...).

Winning Eleven is a great soccer game and it needs to be since it doesn't have the license that FIFA has. I would prefer to play it any day over FIFA even though I can't play with the true teams unless I buy an Action Replay or devote way too much time into the custom edit.

I'm guessing that as long as SEGA can outlast the initial financial impact, the quality of their game will improve tremendously out of videogame darwinism.

Eh, I don't know. ESPN NFL was already a distant second to Madden... I'm sure they put in all the resources they could to make that game better just to compete. I'm not sure that they can make the game that much better to make up for the loss of the license... if they could, they would've done so while they still had it, since it wasn't like they could sit back on their heels.

Isn't the NFL players union a separate entity from the NFL? I can see them signing some player to frontline their games. What would really be bad is if Sega signs the players union to an exclusive contract... either that, or ESPN NFL Europe, or ESPN Arena Football. Ugh.

What I find interesting about the article above is the speculation that maybe Sega's price drop and ensuing price war turned the NFL off because of the loss of revenue, and how that may have played a part in the NFL's decision. That certainly makes logical sense, even if it is pure speculation.

Interesting...reminds me of NHLPA hockey for the Sega Genesis...no real team names or logos...the the colors and the real players.

Now if Sega could pull that off it would be quite a coup...I think most people out there would rather have the real players instead of the teams logo's and stadiums.

Why should they bother now? Here's a hint: they won't.

F EA.