In Depth Reactions to EA / ESPN Deal

Gamespot has a piece up about industry analyst reactions to the EA / ESPN deal. They span the gamut from appreciation for a smart business move to a frustration with a company throwing its weight around. From the article: "Has the fat lady finally sung in the sports-game wars? Should all the other publishers pack it in and head for the showers? Opinions are mixed, but this week's news was one of the year's biggest wins--for Electronic Arts. Now, the industry girds for a string of earnings calls where executives at publicly traded companies--EA and others--will surely face a grilling from curious analysts."

Possible Outcome

[jone5ey]

If it means that next years Madden on the PC is a finely polished product then I'm all for it. Probably won't happen though.

Sega won't go away

[Shadow Wrought]

Just because EA locked up ESPN branding doesn't mean the others are going to just go away. If the EA line stagnates because they rest on their branding prowess, then others will step in. I can't say its good for the gaming industry, but I certainly don't think its a death knell.

I'm going to hate the day....

[matth1jd]

When there's one football game, one baseball game, one hockey game simply because companies have exclusive rights to the NFL, MBL, and NHL and their respective entities.

I could care less about whether it's branded ESPN, but if EA signs a deal with the NFL and Madden's the only football game on the block I'm going to be pissed.

The score...

[Lendrick]

EA 1, Customers 0

Old Times

[Apreche]

EA prides itself on making games which are as true to the sport as possible. They get the actual teams, players, rules, graphics, etc. I remember back around the 16-bit times there were games that tried to be like that. Namely the early EA games and stuff like QB Club, etc. But these games didn't do as well as others.

By others I mean one of the top, if not the top, coin munchers of all time, NBA Jam. Look at games like Ice Hockey for the NES or Baseball Simulator 1000. Nobody cared that the teams were made up or didn't include real star players. In fact, some games including star players tended to really suck, see Gretzky Hockey for NES.

It's almost impossible to compete with EA in the arena of "real" sports games. If you want to have a chance you have to stop trying to emulate the major leagues and take the sport to a new creative level. Something like Baseball Simulator on modern hardware with 3d graphics and online play would be freakin' awesome! Or hell, Bases Loaded, perhaps the best baseball game ever made it had no real players or teams. Nintendo is slightly on the ball with its mario golf/tennis/kart/baseball series. But those games aren't in competition with EA.

I'm confident that a creative developer can take them on without any official-ness.

Re:Sega won't go away

[Fizzlewhiff]

No, EA has the two big fanchises and the exclusive NFL contracks. The big draw to sports games is playing your favorite team. EA has locked in the NFL and taken ESPN away from SEGA. I played the Sega NFL game and for the past 2 years they have shown more innovation than Madden, to the point where I don't buy EA's Madden anymore. THis year the $19.99 price tag for Sega made a good thing even better. I don't see how Sega can have success now with a generic football game. I like seeing my team, my city, my players. Sega is going to have to do alot more innovation now to get players.

Next year will be interesting to see what Sega does. It will also be dull only having one choice.

My biggest problem

[hollismb]

Isn't so much that they screwed Sega over, yet again, or that real NFL players won't be in any Sega football game, or that the teams won't be either. You could very easily create fake teams that looked like their real-life counterparts, and players that mimicked the real ones, then jsut give options to change the names on everything. The thing you can't get around, however, is that they can't use the real stadiums.

And, as far as I know, they don't have an exclusive license on college football. I think Sega should refocus their efforts on college football, and simply blow away the market while they still have a chance.

You call that in depth?

[gorbachev]

A few out-of-context statements from a bunch of financial analysts is in depth analysis now?

Time to reinvent the wheel

[revery]

As always, when someone corners a market, this is the time for other companies to look at what makes sports games fun and come at this from a brand new angle. Sports games that abstract away some of the rules of the game to increase action or speed, new sports, new types of players (but more thought out than "what about Orcs with football helmets?" or "hey what if the players were robots?" type of ideas) though a Warcraft style sport game where teams can be made up of different races and players can mix and match to their hearts content would be interesting...

Anyway, whether these are stupid ideas or not, now is the time for game designers to innovate instead of whine about EA. If they get truly desperate, they can always go and find some Finnish computer science student who's been thinking about designing a game engine. I hear they have great ideas...

Maybe its positive...

[Moby Cock]

I look at it this, the glass is half-full, way. The ESPN license will change the EA football franchise away from Madden. Because, the way I see it, Madden is one of the weakest parts of that franchise. I like Al Michaeals on the play-by-play, but all the repetative MAdden-isms are awful.

I preferred the ESPN football the last few years. The gameplay was better in ESPN/Sega, but not so much so that one was much better than the other. But the voice over work was much less irritating and made for a better game experience.

The exclusivity for EA and the NFL is a serious problem and I think it will lower the innovation in the football genre and it concerns me greatly, but ESPN licensing, is not that big of a deal to me.

Generic Sports != Sales

[Moby Cock]

Wake me up when Mario Golf out sells Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

Re:Sega won't go away

[nolife]

I don't see how Sega can have success now with a generic football game.

Make it configurable and allow imports of configurations. It would be nice to import teams.bin, stadium.bin, and players.bin and now you have something close to the NFL. Of course I do not know how to handle the audio portion of the commentary. Instead of hearing Bettis carried for 97 yards, you would hear number 33 carried for 97 yards.

Re:I don't see what the big deal about this deal i

[rifftide]

Lots of games are sold at Christmas time by people who aren't necessarily gamers. A brand name helps assure buyers - nobody ever got tossed out of Christmas dinner for buying ESPN.

Re:I don't see what the big deal about this deal i

[Chiron Taltos]

So EA can brand their games with ESPN. Woohoo. Big f***ing deal. I don't see how this is of any real importance (unless I'm missing something?

You are missing something, but that's because you aren't a fan of ESPN. There is a very real and devoted group out there who love ESPN. They love SportsCenter, their commercials ("This is SportsCenter"), and their personalities (Dan Patrick, Boomer, Dick Vitale, etc.). ESPN has garnered an MTV-like (and I mean 1980's MTV) aura and devotion to it.

Combined with the NFL exclusive deal, this is one hell of a shot across the bow of all of EA's competitors.

Re:Madden 95 sega controller

[robertjw]

Why didn't they think to throw the brand new teams and rosters onto the old Madden 95 shell?

Simple, how are they going to sell the new game. The only major reason for buying the latest Madden - or any sports game is to upgrade to the latest teams/players/stats/etc... Marketing people would never allow them to sell Madden 95 with an updated roster.

Re:I'm going to hate the day....

[voorko02]

Uh... EA already did this like 3 weeks ago. EA already signed a deal with the NFL, Madden is going to be the only NFL football game on the block for quite some time.

This ESPN deal is just the nail in any SEGA attempts at masqurading their next football game as an NFL game. Now they are pretty much forced to explore either an entirely fictional league, or go after one of the lesser known leagues. I know EA also has a deal with the Arena league, and I would assume the NFL deal also has rights to the World League (isn't that an NFL subsidiary?). I think the CFL is all thats left for SEGA.

The real shame is that EA isn't going to do anything with these other licenses other than makes sure that SEGA doesn't do anything with them. Maybe they'll make a game with them, but utlimately it will just be the same Madden engine with different teams, rules, etc (the differences between EA's college and pro football games are negligible).

Realistically I don't blame EA for making the deal as much as I blame the NFL for agreeing to it.

Re:Euro-style capitalism is the answer.

[Galvatron]

I'm actually not sure I agree. Capitalism may be the best system for producing the best product at the lowest price. However, the goal of the NFL is not to produce the best possible football team, it is to product the most exciting games possible, which is generally produced by having teams which are very close to the same skill level. Hence salary caps, draft picks, and other such "socialist" practices.

Of course, with European football (soccer) I guess you need uneven teams just to make sure that someone's going to get on the scoreboard... God what a boring game. Why don't they widen the goals or something? Jesus.

ESPN's effect on sports...

[Shant3030]

ESPN has destroyed sports, from the way they are anazlyed, viewed and even played.

Take the NBA for instance. The game has changed and become a league where players are more concerned with getting on SportsCenter, than actually playing well and winning. Being on SportsCenter, probably means you made some amazing dunk and therefore will be getting notoriety for a quiet inconsequently part of the game.

On the analysis front, ESPN does a great job of injecting meaningless storylines into games. They over analyze sports, bring up meaningless statistics and really loose focus on the most important part of sports, the actual athletic contest.

This a terrible move for the future of sports games. ESPN will undoubtedly bash sports fans over the head with overblown tie-ins and advertisements.

For someone who loves sports and video games, I'm saddened by this corporate sponsorship.