EA now owns all things NFLPA

Rodster · Post by **Rodster** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:36 pm

I may be in the minority but it doesn't make a difference to me. I've rented Madden the last few years and I would not pay money for a game that basically looks and plays the same year after year. I'm not a fan of Madden or Michaels either so it's no love loss.

If I have to i'll play NFL2K5 for the next 5 years.

Kazuya · Post by **Kazuya** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:37 pm

Bill_Abner wrote:Guys this is not going to be limited to just the football game. W/o that football revenue this is bound to have a major impact on all sega sports games across the board.

You could very well be correct. Consider this: Sega was supposedly considering this to be a "loss leader" year, chopping the price drastically to get people to try their game. Who can know what losses they took on in selling a full-featured game for $20? And now, there will *be* no recouping of the lost sales through gained user base. Will this be a crippling blow?

bdoughty · Post by **bdoughty** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:38 pm

Bill_Abner wrote:Guys this is not going to be limited to just the football game. W/o that football revenue this is bound to have a major impact on all sega sports games across the board.

Agreed as the big money maker was ESPN Football. I can imagine the fax machine at Visual Concepts is busy sending out resumes for employees who realize this.

I feel bad for the guys at VC. It is one thing to lose your job due to poor sales and half harted sequels (cough)Acclaim(/cough). But to lose your job because another company buys out your ability to produce a game simply because you were making an impact is another thing alltogether.

EA is simply Walmart minus all the groceries and cheap clothes.

Post by **Jared** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:39 pm

As for lawsuits, I don't see how anything would hold up in court. EA and others have held exclusive licenses before without challenge. The only possibility is if somehow Sega can say that losing the NFL license somehow devalues their ESPN deal in a way that they could sue....but I have no idea what the ESPN license is like and all of the related legal stuff.

Also, do any of the reports say that this is an exclusive license starting in 2006? If so, then what's the current state of ESPN's license with Sega? Was it supposed to expire after this year? And if so, what were they trying to do to keep the license? Did they also go for the exclusive contract and lose out? Or were they completely blindsided? (I would guess not, considering the rumors that EA were going after the exclusive contract in May....)

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:40 pm

Kazuya wrote:
Bill_Abner wrote:Guys this is not going to be limited to just the football game. W/o that football revenue this is bound to have a major impact on all sega sports games across the board.
You could very well be correct. Consider this: Sega was supposedly considering this to be a "loss leader" year, chopping the price drastically to get people to try their game. Who can know what losses they took on in selling a full-featured game for $20? And now, there will *be* no recouping of the lost sales through gained user base. Will this be a crippling blow?

And as a follow-up, has Sega ever completely recovered financially from the bath it took as a hardware producer with the Dreamcast? Combine that debt with the debt that Kaz mentions above, and Sega could be done with sports gaming.

Take care,
PK

bdoughty · Post by **bdoughty** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:41 pm

Also, do any of the reports say that this is an exclusive license starting in 2006?

Gamespot says 5 year deal and I am guessing it is an exclusive.

LAking · Post by **LAking** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:50 pm

I'm not a football fan and rarely play football video games, but this makes me sick. I seriously feel nausious. Like it was pointed out before, this could have an effect on ALL of Sega's games because of the lack of revenue from the NFL2k series. Just the thought of EA trying to force their competition out of the market by means of money is sickening. I wish we could do a serious boycot of all EA Sports games but the fact is that the hardcore sports gamer market share is puny compared to all the Joe Blow casual gamers who buy madden every year because that's what the marketing dollars tell them to buy. We could never do enough damage to a monster like EA. I actually haven't purchased a single EA game this year but they obviously haven't noticed. I'm depressed.

Post by **Jared** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:50 pm

PK,

Where'd you hear the 5 year/1 billion dollar number? Assuming this is correct, then they would have to sell 4 million copies a year just to pay for licensing. And I'm guessing that Madden sells about 3 million a year on every console. Assuming that they don't sell 6 million copies a year, then they're spending a lot of money to kill ESPN NFL.

BUT if this kills off the rest of the games (NBA, NHL, College Hoops), it makes more sense. The price cuts in March Madness were because MM is getting KILLED by College Hoops, and the same is happening to NHL 2005 by ESPN NHL 2K5. You kill them all off, and then you've got a chance to put the other titles back at $49.99 and not worry about the competition.

OH, and I completely forgot an important part of the release. EA has exclusive ONLINE rights to the NFL. Which means that they're definitely charging for online play. Not sure what the model will be, but I'm guessing that EA is banking on the profit coming from there....by spending that much on the license, they can't make the money back just on game sales alone.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:52 pm

Sega might not be able to sue, but what about a class action lawsuit.

I'm not a lawyer but surely that decreases competition. I wish sports gamers would try a class action lawsuit or something. Becuase we should not be at the mecy of EA Sports.

Post by **Jared** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:52 pm

bdoughty wrote:
Also, do any of the reports say that this is an exclusive license starting in 2006?

Gamespot says 5 year deal and I am guessing it is an exclusive.

Sorry....should have highlighted <b>2006</b> in the original question. It would be weird for ESPN to be working on developing NFL 2K6 without already having secured the license. I would guess that they should have done that by now, especially considering the past rumors about EA going exclusive with Madden.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:54 pm

Jared wrote:

OH, and I completely forgot an important part of the release. EA has exclusive ONLINE rights to the NFL. Which means that they're definitely charging for online play. .

It just keeps getting uglier.

Bill_Abner · Post by **Bill_Abner** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:54 pm

I'm not giving out a contact here because it's listed on the Yahoo Biz article:

Contact:

Electronic Arts
Trudy Muller, 650-628-7323
tmuller@ea.com
or
NFL
Brian McCarthy, 212-450-2069
McCarthyB@NFL.com
or
PLAYERS INC
Christy Moran, 202-496-2885
christy.moran@nflplayers.com

I think a phone call is warranted.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:55 pm

Maybe it is time for me to get another hobby

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:55 pm

Jared:

The five-year, $1-billion figures were the ones being tossed around during E3 when this deal first surfaced. So those aren't confirmed figures, but there could be some validity in them.

This might not be a 10-figure deal, but there's no question it's a nine-figure deal. And I bet it's north of $500 million.

Take care,
PK

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:57 pm

Thank God racing is my favorite sports game genre. EA makes a decent NASCAR game, and there's plenty of competition in the road-racing, rallying and arcade racing sub-genres.

If EA ends up being the only producer of the "big four" stick-and-ball sports, this will suck harder than Linda Lovelace in "Deep Throat."

Take care,
PK

dougb · Post by **dougb** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 7:58 pm

JRod wrote:Sega might not be able to sue, but what about a class action lawsuit.

I'm not a lawyer but surely that decreases competition. I wish sports gamers would try a class action lawsuit or something. Becuase we should not be at the mecy of EA Sports.

I'd love it if we actually had the ability to use the legal system to prevent corporations from crapping all over us like they have in this instance. But in this instance I just don't have much confidence that the law would be on the side of the consumer.

Of course, historically congress has come in an legislated to prevent monopolies. But that was long ago and with the current gang I'm absolutely not holding my breath.

Best wishes,

Doug

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:02 pm

I don't think Sega was calling the shots. It sounded like Take Two was determining pricing strategies. In the transcript I linked in the other thread, the Take Two CEO talked about broadening their line (probably extreme sports). He claimed the leagues were all happy because unit volumes and dollar totals were all up as a result of the lower pricing.

Then later, EA's CEO said the leagues and players associations might demand a minimum license per copy sold, which would make the $19.95 pricing almost impossible. He claimed the leagues saw lower total dollar amounts as a result of the lower pricing. So a contradiction to what the Take Two guy said but they didn't really delve further.

Probst also said the licensors seemed more open to exclusivity but he didn't identify which leagues.

You know in an ironic way, maybe EA doesn't see as much of an increase in sales from having the only NFL game. I'm sure there are diehard NFL2K fans who will never buy Madden. But I think a lot of the energy in this market was generated by the heated debates about the relative merits of the two different games. Now with that gone, maybe a lot of gamers stop buying football games.

The thing is, Take Two had indicated that their low-price strategy would end no later than the launch of the next generation. Now, maybe EA feared that the people whom ESPN attracted with the low price would permanently switch, even if ESPN went back up to $50. But there's no proof of that. In fact, before this year, ESPN had seen higher sales with the 2002 version instead of the 2003 and 2004 versions. So the ESPN base (the number of people who will buy ESPN year after year) hasn't really been established, at least not at the $50 price that all publishers target.

Post by **Jared** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:03 pm

I'm guessing that VC didn't see this coming. Seems like they're hiring:

http://www.espnvideogames.com/jobs/

In fact, they're hiring for an online game designer to work on the ESPN NFL series. Wonder how long this job will be up.....

http://www.espnvideogames.com/jobs/view ... jobid=1010

We're looking for an Online Game Designer to help design the next wave of online features for the critically-acclaimed “2K” series of sports games, including the recent best-selling ESPN NFL 2K5. The successful candidate will research, design and document new online game features and work with artists and engineers to implement them. The successful candidate will take ownership in their work and great pride in helping create the best sports online gaming experience available anywhere.

I think SEGA got blindsided.....

Diablo25 · Post by **Diablo25** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:04 pm

Right now I feel like someone kicked me right in the nuts'

Inuyasha · Post by **Inuyasha** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:05 pm

I am a bit pessimistic now about the next Madden EA games on the current generation consoles. I really like madden this year and thought they made great improvements with the gameplay. But, with the NFL and NFLPA exclusivity, plus no competition, EA will sit on their collective butts when it comes to improving their games .

Ironically, the sega 20 dollar strategy probably just killed off their sports franchises. EA probably doesn't make this deal if Sega's 20 dollar strategy didnt cut into their market share.

Also, anyone in Vegas over the weekend for the Madden Challenge Finals? I've never seen so many QB draw plays in my whole life (almost everyone used the Falcons or Vikings).

bdoughty · Post by **bdoughty** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:06 pm

Wonder if Mutant League Football is back in the public domain

A quick call to Shawn Bradley could answer that.

GTHobbes · Post by **GTHobbes** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:08 pm

I'm a lawyer (although I don't practice this type of law), and it looks like we're screwed. I'm done with football videogames...

What a lousy f&*king day.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:11 pm

Weaver2005 wrote:

Ironically, the sega 20 dollar strategy probably just killed off their sports franchises. EA probably doesn't make this deal if Sega's 20 dollar strategy didnt cut into their market share.

Yep

See a threat ???
Dont fight it with making your game better.
Dont fight it by making a console specific game instead of a garbage port.

Do it the EA way...buy out their air supply/food supply and snuff em out.
Kill em for daring to offer any competition.

Inuyasha · Post by **Inuyasha** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 8:15 pm

Leebo33 wrote:Maybe it is time for me to get another hobby

heh, I was thinking the same thing. If EA gives us basically the same game year in and year out, whats it worth. Just think if EA was the only choice on PS2/XB/GC for the last 5 years.

And with this exclusivity, will EA Football still be 50 bucks next year? Everyone and their grandma's buy madden, I wouldn’t be surprised if they sold it for 60 or more next season.