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."

EA Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you can make a game configurable enough to have names and rosters and even uniformans for real NFL teams be downloadable but on the marketing front is where I think any non-EA unit will struggle since their commercials won't have the rela players.

On the upside, it might force all non-EA game makers to really upgrade their products on the gameplay front since they will have to win by knockout on the "This game is just hands down better than Madden".

Still, I uspect given the general populations proclivities we've seen the end of "major" competition to EA in the NFL arean so get ready for Madden 2005 to be the stanard game you'll be playing until, oh say, 2010.

What's next in Madden 2kx ?

[sonnyjz]

John Madden, Al Michaels, and guess who... Chris Berman doing the halftime and postgame. That's what I believe they will try to sell out of the gates. I sure hope hope they work on gameplay and introducing new features as well in Madden. That was the beauty of having competition in the market, you could look at the competitor and think, "How do we top that?"

I sure hope we do not have stale games with roster updates and better graphics.

long contracts mean weak projections

[Speare]

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard it was that "long contracts mean weak projections." You have to have a lot of years to demand a lot of dollars. If ESPN's projections for growth in this arena were better, there'd be a lot more pressure for shorter contracts so they could return to the auction block sooner.

Re:Madden 95 sega controller

[MaelstromX]

Madden 95 for the Sega Genesis was indeed a kick-ass game and I'm glad to see them offering it in this form. But of course, there's the huge drawback of having ancient players on there that nobody cares about -- I'd rather play as TEAM PITTSBURGH with QB#7 than the Steelers with Neil O'Donnell. And good thing my favorite team isn't the Ravens, or the Texans, or the Titans (well, that's a good thing anyway).

Why didn't they think to throw the brand new teams and rosters onto the old Madden 95 shell? Wouldn't that be sweet to play an old game like that and get to use Michael Vick or LaDainian Tomlinson (or whomever)? I haven't kept up with the emulation scene lately but if I recall correctly, a lot of guys work hard to recreate those old sports games with new players -- I can't imagine that for a game like Madden 95, EA would have to spend much time at all adapting it given that they have all the data and licensing on hand already.

What about XFL football?

[weszz]

I've heard some talk of a series that's kind of like the tv series Playmakers, also something about a All Pro game using maybe people from the Hall of Fame (they are not part of the NFL Players Association anymore)

but what about just going with the old XFL? there was some pretty cools tuff in there that could make a video game quite fun... and it's got to be pretty cheap, same idea and all behind it, but you can go nuts with the features since XFL probably would have liked them...

All you need is to remember "He Hate Me"

Re:EA Wins

[MaelstromX]

I know you can make a game configurable enough to have names and rosters and even uniformans for real NFL teams be downloadable but on the marketing front is where I think any non-EA unit will struggle since their commercials won't have the rela players.

The other manufacturers will have to focus on 2 main points:

(1) Free and easily downloadable "unofficial" team/roster sets. This will end up even being a plus because nobody will be playing with outdated rosters -- your favorite team can be as current as it was last Sunday (instead of last August).

(2) Price. As long as point (1) is taken care of, a $20 football game could easily compete with $50 or $60 Madden. Sure, it won't compete for first place in sales, as naturally most people will want the official NFL game and feel loyalty to the Madden franchise, but I hope that the other manufacturers don't simply roll over and feel like it's now impossible to create a game that anyone would buy. Rather than leave the NFL video game arena entirely, this is exactly the time for the other guys to, like you said, come out with something that blows Madden away, because God knows the biggest innovations in the next Madden will be (1) the only officially licensed NFL video game and (2) now with realistic ESPN look!

Re:Sega won't go away

[Moby Cock]

I think they may be best served my migrating into the College Football domain. The EA franchise there is weak, although it is there unto itself, with no competition. And college football is extremely popular. It could work very nicely. If Sega could get exclusivity from the NCAA that would be a big boon. It may not be possible though, I have no idea how sweeping the NCAA control over marketing and licensing is.