Wow, Take-Two landed exclusive third party rights to any MLB baseball games. Looks like this year will be the last MVP baseball game from EA Sports.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01...s_6116946.html

Goddamn

Exclusivity with sports games...

I wonder who's getting NHL?

Is that some new sport?

Gees! Whats next, Golf, Tennis?

Actually, EA already has Golf.

So the ESPN line up will really suck next year?

Actually EA now has the ESPN name for a few years.

Actually it would be nice to finally have a tennis game that actually has rights to all players (although MOST of the players would do, say top 20-50), all the tournaments (atp, wta, grand slams), and faithful reproductions of all stadiums (since when has melbourne park had blue courts anyway..). Also make it as good as top spin or better while you're at it .

Nearly every tennis game has only a small selection of the above and it's quite annoying for tennis fans I think.

Football fans have it good, being able to buy a game with every team and all the players and stats.

Man, guess it's a good thing I've lost interest in sports games the past couple years.

This just sucks so badly! Glad I'll have MVP 2005 on my Xbox and PSP....forever

Sigh... it just gets worse and worse.

Pretty impossible I think. Tennis players are basically like independent contractors, just like golfers, to my knowledge. So you just negotiate with who you can get afford. Licensing the biggest names (Agassi, Sampras, Roddick, Venus, Serena, Kournikova, etc.) would cost a fortune, so you normally only see 3-4 of those names per game.

Yeah it still sucks though .

Still just having faithfully reproduced stadiums and real tournaments would be a big thing and I presume you could negotiate directly with the atp and the grandslam guys for that.

Chris

How about we all just have a huge boycott of sports titles next year? Send the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the gaming companies a message that exclusivity sucks.

Exclusivity does suck. This is fucking ridiculous. Lack of competition is a BAD thing, if anything, the WWE(F) has taught us that...

So Sega wont have a NFL or MLB title next year?

SEGA is done with sports, however, Take-Two/Visual Concepts has basically been doign the sports for SEGA now anyways.

So, as it stands now:
EA has:
ESPN license
NFL/NFLPA license
Arena Football license
PGA

VC/Take-Two:
MLBPA (not MLB yet): license

Up for grabs:
NHL
NBA
College/NCAA

Yes, it does suck, because competition is limited now. I just hope VC/TT gets NBA....well, I hope NO ONE gets it.

Count me in.

EA also had the FIFA license for some time now.

Sega officially out of the sports game
[UPDATE] The Japanese publisher confirms it has sold off Visual Concepts and its Kush subsidiary for a bargain price of $24 million.

When Sega entered into an agreement with Take-Two Interactive to copublish its line of ESPN sports games last year, many industry watchers suspected the publisher was planning to sell off its internal sports studio, Visual Concepts. Those suspicions were confirmed just before Christmas when it was revealed that part of the codistribution deal allowed Take-Two to buy Visual Concepts, should it choose to do so.
Today, it appears the publisher has chosen to do just that. Following this morning's announcement that Take-Two had secured exclusive third-party publishing rights from the Major League Baseball Players' Association, Sega confirmed to GameSpot that it is selling Visual Concepts to Take-Two.

According to sources, Sega parted with the critically esteemed developer of ESPN NFL 2K5 and ESPN NBA 2K5 for just $24 million. That very low-sounding price is likely due to Electronic Arts' impending monopoly of NFL game rights and its 15-year exclusivity deal with ESPN, whose high-profile brand name will no longer give Visual Concepts' games instant recognition.

Though the exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, Take-Two will become the sole owner of Visual Concepts. It will also own VC's Kush Games subsidiary, which developed ESPN NHL 2K5 and ESPN Major League Baseball 2K5. Presumably, the studio will also create Take-Two's upcoming pro baseball game.

"The ESPN Videogames line has not been a key profit driver in the North American market for Sega," Naoya Tsurumi, CEO of Sega of America, said in a statement. "While Sega recognizes the strength and depth of the ESPN Videogames franchise, we must remain committed to growing content that will help boost revenues across all western territories."

In addition to news of the sale of Visual Concepts is the disclosure of a new agreement between Sega and Take-Two. The companies said Sega will distribute "select Take-Two published software titles in the Asian region including Japan," as well as bring sports titles developed by Visual Concepts "to amusement machines produced and distributed by Sega Amusements" in Asia. Certainly, an interesting twist to the news of the Visual Concepts sell-off.

GameSpot will have more information on this story as it becomes available.

By Tor Thorsen, Curt Feldman -- GameSpot
POSTED: 01/24/05 05:04 PM PST

As I mentioned in the other post, this is awful news. Sports games are notorious for lack of major innovation from year to year and exclusivity should only make it worse. EA makes so much money from simply updating rosters and adding lame soundtracks.

Since it's now inevitable that sports leagues are granting exclusive rights, this was actually the best news possible.

If EA grabs up the rights to official versions of every sport, nobody else stays in the game. Overcoming EA mindshare with generic sports would be almost completely impossible.

If the leagues split (especially with deals like the baseball one, which actually allows competition), each company has a chance to subsidize sales lost by their generic sports by increased sales of the official ones. Thus, it's more likely that EA and (the ex-) Visual Concepts' products continue to push each other in each category, year after year.

This sucks