Fucking goddamn EA again...

actually, they produce the only college football game on the market also, mainly because they own the rights to BCS Bowls. Sega is the only company left making games that can compete against EA's baseball and basketball games. Microsoft shut down then sold their sport studios to Take-Two actually.

 

Last time I heard, NCAA licenses its product and currently EA is the only one to tap the market. I imagine we should see an annoucement come very soon that either the NCAA or the major conferences lock in deals. No reason for EA to slow down and let the competition get any foot in the door. You illustrate the situation perfectly in that you have no skin in the game, so who cares.

Based on your limited view of the interactive video entertainment industry as it stands today, perhaps the analogy is not fitting. However PC games on CD's, XBOX and PS/2 games on DVD as seperate entities is something that will not be commonplace in the next decade. Interactive video entertainment is going to fuse with TV as we know it today and this small market share is going to swell into hundreds of billions of dollars a year. EA knows this all too well and that is why they are taking the oppurtunity to consume every segment of this market while there is little resistence from other companies or the government.

Imagine in 15 years were you are watching a live NFL football game and at the same time overlaying it with a interactive video game. The live stream buffering on your DVR drive (solid state of course) not only contains video and audio, but also a data stream that feeds the players in the formation, the plays being called, the current weather and other things from the real world experiance into your interactive program and allows you to actually play the game based on the program you are watching. I have seen a mockup of this in our research facility and it is pretty cool. But if EA continues to gobble up all the licenses and forces everyone else out, then we will be stuck with a single corporation beholden to it's share holders and policies of efficacy to push this state of the art and it will not be as good as it could be.

 

Buddy of mine from our licensing department said the NBA deal has ink and just awaiting the lawyers. The MLB deal has been pitched by EA but it is sitting on Bud Seligs desk and may never be found again...

 

I don't agree, so it doesn't matter what I say? uhh...sure. Whatever.

Actually, it doesn't even serve the purpose you want it to. You want to suggest that because EA owns the computer game licenses on two factions of football (OK, 3, I remember the AFL thing if that is really true), that it's going to hurt all of video gaming.
The analogy suggests that there will be no competition, and yet you're not posting from an IBM machine - so the analogy doesn't even say what you want it to say.

If it's such a lucrative market, then there should've been a push from a variety of places first.

>>Imagine in 15 years were you are watching a live NFL football game and at the same time overlaying it with a interactive video game.

Yeah, big reason I don't get this deep into this crap. Football is freaking football, games are games.

Might not be as good as it could be.
And how would it have been if another, smaller company had done the same? The real whore is the NCAA, NFL, and anyone else selling an exclusive license, not the fact that you don't like EA and they had the money to pay it. They were the ones who created this.

At any rate, I enjoy most football games I've played, and if five years from now I'm not taking virtual reality hits while playing Madden, I think I'll be allright, just as I'll end up being allright if I play what I have, or go find the best one from last year, or do nothing.

 

so if the NFL sold an exclusive broadcast agreement to AM radio, you'd just sit back and listen to AM radio happily, watch last year's recordings, or do nothing? You obviously have no clue what's at stake here. You're coming from the POV that you don't have that much invested in NFL video gaming, so you can take whatever EA shovels out, however the people that are actually into NFL video games have to settle for whatever we end up with, thanks to no competition. Sure, it'll probably end up being better than ever, especially now that they will catch hell if they drop the ball, but that's not the point. AMD vs. Intel isn't a valid comparison, because AMD isn't locked out of using x86 architecture in the same way that every video game company is locked out of using NFL logos, teams, and player names. What would you say if Microsoft signed an exclusive deal to only run on Intel platforms?

 

It's more like whether I'd watch CBS even though I liked NBC (can't stand either, but if a game's on I want to see, I just watch the fucking thing). But if the only way I could listen was AM radio, which isn't a corporation, then I'd do my best. At times, that's been the only option, and it beat pouting and wishing.

If that's true, then the point is you guys don't like EA? I don't care one way or the other, and no I'm not emotionally invested and no I don't spend hundreds of dollars on console games a year. That doesn't invalidate what I say - at worst, you suck it up and play the competitor's games for a few years and then the technology starts to change enough that it becomes a diminishing return to keep with your game.

But the end result is that I don't find the logic in spending $40 every year anyway, if the games are only slightly different year to year.

And no, that wouldn't change with a competitor doing the games.

Then I'd probably have to use MS and Intel. I'm not dead-ass set to use AMD only, and I want the best product. If only one product exists, like it basically does for MS, then I choose the only product, Intel. I don't like that MS is the only real OS manufacturer with widespread ability in the market, but I end up not giving a shit if it'll do what I want.

It's not a great comparison, but it exists. Intel had the lock on the market, and people found ways around it. For instance, I'd play a HS football game, if it were good enough; I'd play a CFL game if it were good enough.

 

The last good football game from sega came out on the dreamcast. I honestly think madden is a better game, but it is just my opinion. While I may not agree with the Sega lover, if he thinks that this will ruin the games than so be it. I am tired of arguing with my customers about espn being better(but it's only 20 bucks....)jmho