January 26, 2005
hillarious…
the newest penny arcade is absolutly hillarious…
There is a video game company called Electronic Arts that has been and still is purchasing video companies to solidify their hold on the video game market. In fact, EA recently entered into a deal with the NFL for exclusivity. Any NFL game coming out between now and seven years from now, will be EA created. This might seem strange because there are currently four or five major companies producing NFL sports titles.
anyways Penny arcade recently purchased the rights to make video game comics… yeah and it is hillarious… here is a link if your curious
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-01-26
February 3rd, 2005 at 6:55 am
It gets even better. You see, one of EA’s only third party rivals in the sports game business is none other than SegaSports. This is probably the company that give’s EA’s Madden NFL the stiffest competition, even though Madden is, and probably will be for a very long time, the market leader. How does Sega compete? By putting out a pretty good product. Their games are developed by Visual Concepts and the gameplay and graphics are on par with Madden (better, some would argue); they are priced aggressively; and they make full use of the ESPN license. However. EA went and negotiated exclusive rights to the [url=http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3137794]ESPN license[/url] [i:ab1d5bfe03]for the next 15 years[/i:ab1d5bfe03]. After next (this?) year, not only will Sega not be able to make a game based on the NFL, they won’t even be able to use the ESPN logo and all the other things tose rights bring to a sport’s game. In short, [url=http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3137900] SegaSports is dead.[/url] But that’s okay. Because Take Two, Sega’s partner with the ESPN games has went and negotiated an exclusive deal with [url=http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3138012]Major League Baseball[/url], which is pretty much what people were expecting would happen once EA started locking up rights left and right, The NBA shouldn’t be far behind and possibly even the NHL (even thought there currently is no NHL). It’s not all EA’s fault though. Apparantly the [url=http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3137894]NFL wanted to auction it’s rights off to a single high bidder[/url], hoping that by narrowing it’s focus, it could provide a “premium” (translation=”more expensive”) product. So now instead of being video games that happen to feature the NFL, they will be NFL products that happen to be video games. What this means to gamers. At first, the Jockying for sport’s licenses (no pun intended) shouldn’t affect the average gamer that doesn’t play sports games. However, the way many companies are set up, the NFL may serve as an anchor for thier entire sports line (SegaSports was set up like this, Midway too with thier “Blitz” series). In turn, the Sports line of game companies may generate revenue that supports titles in thier non-sports lines. (Maybe one less Sonic spin-off; one less character added to the next Mortal Kombat). And don’t forget the strength of certain titles (namely Madden) at launch to act as a killer-ap spelling success for some consoles (PS2). Or it’s absence spelling death for others (Dreamcast). That’s what I’m most worried about, especially watching EA absorb smaller companies on a daily basis. It seems we have another Microsoft on our hands.