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| DarkZero 1015th Post
 
Red Carpet Premium Member
    
    
    
|  "Re(2):Sega PWNED by EA" , posted Tue 21 Dec 22:08
quote:
How is this any different than Visa being the official credit card of the NFL -whatever the hell that means- or Budweiser's long history of associating their beer with major league football? So now EA is the official game company of the NFL; that's too bad for the other game companies but if EA had the money to get the exclusive contract it's a perfectly legit business deal. If Segammy had the same financial clout don't you think they would have tried the same thing?
The NFL's endorsement of Visa and Budweiser doesn't actually remove competition from the market, though. Visa may be the official card of the NFL, but there are still other cards and all of them work pretty much the same way as Visa. This is less like "Visa: The Official Card of the NFL" and more like "Visa: The Only Card You Can Buy NFL Seats With". The reality of the matter is that there used to be multiple NFL games competing with each other for the title of "highest quality NFL game" and now there are not.
It's no different than if all of Gran Turismo's car licensing deals were made exclusive, and Gran Turismo became the ONLY racing game available where you could actually drive real cars with the real names and designs. Yes, there would be other racing games, just as there are other football games, but none of them would have the benefit of actually emulating the reality of the sport and all of the uniqueness inherent to it. And if Gran Turismo were the only "real" racing game, would they be overhauling the physics engine, adding online capability, pushing the car manufacturers to add visual car damage, and adding several new modes to an already incredibly expansive game? Of course not. "Fuck it, we're going to be #1 for the next straight decade anyway."
No one is ever going to beat "the real NFL game" in sales. Not with higher quality, not with a lower pricepoint, not with brilliant innovations or taking slick advantage of the capabilities of new systems. EA could stop innovating right now and they would still win hands down, so that's likely what they're going to do. And without any hope of winning, no one else has a reason to innovate, either.
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| KTallguy 445th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(3):Sega PWNED by EA" , posted Tue 21 Dec 22:26:
I'm wondering if there will be any backlash from the gaming community because of this...
SEGA could get really smart though... what they could do is this... make a football game with all fictional teams... then have a really detailed editor... have a 'fan' make all the teams on the editor, and distribute it online, and there you have real teams! They do this with soccer games a lot ...
The problem is, the announcers and stuff can't actually say the player's names... uh... this is really shitty for SEGA. Honestly, if this is what it's coming to in the game industry, then I really hope that there's a massive backlash from the community.
The problem is, average joe schmoe frat boy gamer won't know, or care... and still pick up Madden... die hard madden players will pick it up as well. I'm just curious what the effect will be.
I wouldn't say that the next Madden will be really shitty though... I'm thinking that EA will try to completely blow SEGA's effort out with a good, polished game... don't get me wrong, this isn't their track record... but now that they have the lisence, it's all about the one two punch to knock out the competitor. It's still going to be Madden when it comes out, and I'll be EXTREMELY surprised if it's a new engine... but at the same time, they'll probably make it LOOK really good...
We just have to wait and see... I guess...
EDIT: EA buys 19.9% stake in Ubisoft
From Gamespy
Support the Strongest Cooperation! Ibuki and Genjuro!
"手前がやくぶそくなんだよ!"
[this message was edited by KTallguy on Tue 21 Dec 22:39] |
| Ishmael 1749th Post
Tailored Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
 
   
| "Re(3):Sega PWNED by EA" , posted Wed 22 Dec 06:17
quote:
The NFL's endorsement of Visa and Budweiser doesn't actually remove competition from the market, though. Visa may be the official card of the NFL, but there are still other cards and all of them work pretty much the same way as Visa. This is less like "Visa: The Official Card of the NFL" and more like "Visa: The Only Card You Can Buy NFL Seats With". The reality of the matter is that there used to be multiple NFL games competing with each other for the title of "highest quality NFL game" and now there are not.
It's no different than if all of Gran Turismo's car licensing deals were made exclusive, and Gran Turismo became the ONLY racing game available where you could actually drive real cars with the real names and designs. Yes, there would be other racing games, just as there are other football games, but none of them would have the benefit of actually emulating the reality of the sport and all of the uniqueness inherent to it. And if Gran Turismo were the only "real" racing game, would they be overhauling the physics engine, adding online capability, pushing the car manufacturers to add visual car damage, and adding several new modes to an already incredibly expansive game? Of course not. "Fuck it, we're going to be #1 for the next straight decade anyway."
No one is ever going to beat "the real NFL game" in sales. Not with higher quality, not with a lower pricepoint, not with brilliant innovations or taking slick advantage of the capabilities of new systems. EA could stop innovating right now and they would still win hands down, so that's likely what they're going to do. And without any hope of winning, no one else has a reason to innovate, either.
I agree that the lack of competition may hurt the quality of EA's future offerings, or would the desire to keep the contract be enough of an incentive to keep the games fresh? In a couple of years other game companies are going to start wanting to steal that deal for themselves and the NFL is going to be checking to see if it makes more money from an exclusive contract or from the split license they had before. EA may have won out this round but this contract isn't going to hold them forever.
But what I don't understand is why there are people out there who are acting like EA brokered some sort of Faustian deal here. NFL stamped shirts, caps and other paraphernalia can be licensed out to a single manufacturer, why should games be any different? To use a creaky analogy, it's like how when a book is made into a movie there's only one movie made of it at a time. The only thing about this exclusive agreement that I'm surprised about is that it took someone this long to try a stunt like this.
quote:
I'm wondering if there will be any backlash from the gaming community because of this...
Little to none from game players is my guess. A majority of game players don't follow the business side of games. Other game companies are probably wondering how they can get the same sort of contracts.
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| DarkZero 1016th Post
Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(4):Sega PWNED by EA" , posted Wed 22 Dec 16:55
quote:
I agree that the lack of competition may hurt the quality of EA's future offerings, or would the desire to keep the contract be enough of an incentive to keep the games fresh?
EA and the NFL created this deal at a time when another football game was finally starting to rival Madden, which meant that the fans were starting to like a non-EA NFL game as much, if not more so, than EA's NFL game. This means that the NFL specifically decided to make this deal at a time when the fans would be least receptive to it. Given that, I doubt that EA will be in any danger of losing the license unless they suddenly decide to file for Chapter 11 tomorrow.
quote:
But what I don't understand is why there are people out there who are acting like EA brokered some sort of Faustian deal here. NFL stamped shirts, caps and other paraphernalia can be licensed out to a single manufacturer, why should games be any different? To use a creaky analogy, it's like how when a book is made into a movie there's only one movie made of it at a time. The only thing about this exclusive agreement that I'm surprised about is that it took someone this long to try a stunt like this.
As a recent Video Fenky post mentioned, one of the interesting issues here is that the NFL is technically licensing facts, not copyrighted materials, to EA. Harry Potter fighting Lord Voldemort is a copyrighted idea that came out of someone's head and is their property. A quarterback's throwing record and various other statistics are things that actually exist in the real world, not something that someone made up, and are therefore facts. So it's less like licensing the Harry Potter books and a bit more like licensing, say, World War 2. They're licensing actual, quantifiable facts; events that have actually occurred in the real world. For some reason, and maybe a silly one, that bothers people a lot more than licensing a novel or a movie. I think it's because the point of a novel or movie becomes diluted as it's over-licensed, whereas there's no way to actually dilute fact. You can't screw up the idea behind it because there's no idea behind it to begin with.
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in the darkest night..."
"Re(3):..." , posted Wed 15 Dec 03:14
"Re(3):Sega PWNED by EA" , posted Thu 16 Dec 07:08
