EA signs a 5 year exclusive deal with NFL

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

LOS ANGELES, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday said it has signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League and the league's players, giving EA sole rights to put NFL players and teams in its games.

 

Terms of the five-year deal were not disclosed.

Article

 

What do you do when your competition undercuts your main product in price and maybe quality? Keep them from making any more games..

 

Of course this doesn't affect Gamecube owners..

[AndrewTS 0]

EA is evil and must be stopped.

 

However, looking on the bright side, this means maybe competing companies may need to give us some more innovative products.

 

Maybe next-gen Mutant League Football Tecmo Bowl games could be on the way to fill the void.

[BUTT 0]

Except, who made Mutant League Football?

 

EA, that's who.

[TheBigSwigg 0]

That's nuts. I fucking hate EA

[Guest Dynamite Kido]

Madden is the only NFL game I would buy anyway.....but it sucks for those strapped for cash. I only hope and pray this doesn't happen with the NBA though.........NBA2K5 owns Live no doubt.....

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

EA already signed an exclusive deal with NASCAR so it wouldn't surprise me if they went ahead and did the NBA and MLB.

 

Let the other companies battle it out over hockey games.

[Golgo 13 0]

Guess it's official now. Something like this was posted here a few months back, but it was written off and both sides went so far as to send out rebuttals saying it wouldn't happen.

 

I wonder if Sega has any legal grounds to challenge this.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

Hopefully Madden will drop a bit in price then since it won't be competing with anybody else. If they don't become consumer friendly then to hell with them.

[Slayer 0]

Hopefully Madden will drop a bit in price then since it won't be competing with anybody else.

[NoCalMike 0]

The ESPN games were going to go back up to $50 anyway, 2004 was just a promotional special to possibly get Madden buyers to also throw down a mere $20 to check out the competition.

[Damaramu 0]

Man.....I've only played Madden so I don't know exactly how to react.

 

I like the NCAA game more than the Madden anyways but still...that's crazy.

[UseTheSledgehammerUh 0]

Fuck this.

 

NFL 2K5 is the best of all video games.

2K3 just behind it.

 

Goddamn Madden.

[jimmy no nose 0]

That's retarded. EA have been saying ever since ESPN dropped its price that they don't even view them as competition so I don't see why they'd feel the need to do this. I quit football games.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

This doesn't sound like anything drastic to me.

 

Disney owns ESPN. Disney competes with Madden. EA puts up money to make Madden exclusive. Now, do you think Disney would rather cough up money to top EA, or would they rather sell the ESPN brand and likeness to EA for use in the upcoming exclusive Madden game.

 

I don't see this as eliminating competition. The competition (ESPN) probably realized they could make money instead of spend money.

[Red Baron 0]

No competition=less and less quality in the game.

[Red Baron 0]

They better not do this for hockey....

[LaParkaMarka 0]

This is terrible, terrible news. I heart my ESPN 2k5, and I was already looking forward to next year. EA is a bunch of cocksuckers.

 

Edit: Story not available? Anyone have a working link?

[Red Baron 0]

ya thats true...

 

i don't think i've seen it anywhere else though

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

Yay! Five more years of glorified roster updates!

 

EA's the biggest cancer to the videogame industry, seriously. They put out mediocre games, and nobody says anything bad about them because they have the reviewers paid off.

 

Not to mention the numerous ways they find to spit in the face of people who buy from them..

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Maybe VC will apply their talents for a better college game.

[GeneMean 0]

gamespot link

 

This sucks.

[Golgo 13 0]

And here's the updated story on Reuters itself...

 

Link

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

I prefer Madden, but monopolies only screw over the paying customer.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

EA's the biggest cancer to the videogame industry, seriously. They put out mediocre games, and nobody says anything bad about them because they have the reviewers paid off.

 

Not to mention the numerous ways they find to spit in the face of people who buy from them..

Bitch at the NFL. They're the ones who decided to make their license exclusive to one company. The only thing EA did was offer to pay more than other companies for that license.

 

This is why NCAA is still better. This kind of crap doesn't happen because of all the colleges involved.

[nogoodnick 0]

I love EA and hate the ESPN games . I dont know how you can call EA games mediocre. If theres a company who wont let quality suffer its them.

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

I love EA and hate the ESPN games .  I dont know how you can call EA games mediocre.  If theres a company who wont let quality suffer its them.

They put out state of the art games, I agree.

 

If you own a PS2.

 

None of their Xbox games take advantages of the system's power, and most look like crap if you've got a decent video setup.

 

Not to mention they held out on Live play for the longest time because they wanted to charge extra to play their stuff.

 

How about the fact the old game won't be playable online after the new one comes out?

 

As for more on the quality suffering bit..ask the people in the Command and Conqure community. EA forced the developer to basically recreate the game halfway through to capatalize on the 9/11 events. Then releases an expansion pack, and abandoned the community, leaving them with a broken, unbalanced, crash-happy game with pathetic multiplayer code.

 

How about all the people having trouble playing Sims 2 (EA's best-selling property, I believe) because of copy protection software glitches? Guess what EA's doing? Nothing.

 

Yup, that's quality for you.

[Agent_Bond34 0]

I love EA and hate the ESPN games .  I dont know how you can call EA games mediocre.  If theres a company who wont let quality suffer its them.

 

Now, if EA is a company that won't let it's quality suffer, then why is the Xbox version of NCAA Football 2005 plagued with slowdown issues?

[nogoodnick 0]

EA has exclusive rights to Nascar and Tiger Woods/PGA tour and the quality of those games hasnt suffered. Madden doesnt have any problems either. Are you playing NCAA on PS2? Because that would be a good reason for some slowdown issues.

[Agent_Bond34 0]

I have NCAA on Xbox.

[AndrewTS 0]

"E...A...Sports.

 

Now it's the only game!"