EA gets exclusive rights to the NFL!!

[BigBDrugStores]

did anyone ever make an xfl game
arena football would be a good idea

[Thirteen]

did anyone ever make an xfl game
arena football would be a good idea

XFL wasn't even around long enough to have commercials

[eS El Duque]

wait..might be good...ESPN CFL 2K5  ..or Arena Football...fuck the Madden, i'll still watch the NFL..jsut not play their gay ass game 

CFL??? Arena football??? Dude, cmon

people would buy it

[Shallow]

Looks like Sega's football department will now have to focus on NCAA. There is a huge market out there for NCAA Football fans, and I wonder if you can do a history type thing where you can use ex College players, thus NFL players? That may not be possible with the agreement EA has with the NFL, but who knows?

I don't think it's a good move by EA. I mean they get the majority sales anyway, and now with out competition, they may go soft. No competition is never god for business. Look at McMahon and the WWE. The second they bought WCW, business started dropping and creativity went to shit. If EA makes second rate games two years from now and keeps it up until the end of the agreement, then the first NFL game by another company is going to be ready and will emerge victorious. I mean the other companies are going to have 5 years to perfect a football game.

If the others do focus on NCAA or god forbid high school, then I'll buy one out of spite. I don't even own any new systems, but I will support the cause of striking against the evil monopolizers. I still have a Apple Macintosh I don't use. Take that Bill Gates!


Something tells me that Mario Football is on the way.

[Black_Smoke]

yea they can still make a NCAA football game n i think it will sell good if it has good gameplay n shit

[Shallow]

yea they can still make a NCAA football game n i think it will sell good if it has good gameplay n shit

The big problem with past NCAA Football games was tat you could tell it was the developers B Team working on the game. NCAA football probabl;y makes more money than all the other leagues in the World outside of the NFL and European Soccer. It's a huge industry with a huge fan base.

[Trauma-san]

Extremely huge business move, they'll make a fucking fortune.  The one guy said this hinders creativity, I don't agree.  Every disaster is an opportunity in disguise... if the competing companies are TRULY creative, and TRULY produce a superior game, which is of course possible, if they're good enough, it'll sell even better than the NFL licensed one, without the NFL teams and players.  It's possible, and if they're good enough, they can do it. 

Yeah right... no one is gonna buy some shit that doesnt have the NFL teams or players.

If they don't rise above this, it's just because of a lack of creativity. 

[[Stoned]Jesus H. Christ[Wheat]]

this blows so fucking bad. EA blows. Madden ain't gonna be changing much for 5 years. Segas is so much better anyway.

[Shallow]

Extremely huge business move, they'll make a fucking fortune.  The one guy said this hinders creativity, I don't agree.  Every disaster is an opportunity in disguise... if the competing companies are TRULY creative, and TRULY produce a superior game, which is of course possible, if they're good enough, it'll sell even better than the NFL licensed one, without the NFL teams and players.  It's possible, and if they're good enough, they can do it. 

Yeah right... no one is gonna buy some shit that doesnt have the NFL teams or players.

If they don't rise above this, it's just because of a lack of creativity. 

However, there have been some extraordinary games over the years that simply don't sell. It may be due to lack of marketing or just lack of interest in the unknown. I'm sure there will be some amazing generic football games coming out, but that doesn't mean they will sell well. People in general stick to whats working for them. Game Cube had some very intriguing games made for it with a real twist on gaming, but it's still dead last in the race and was never given a chance by the general gamer. Sega's Shenmue was absolutely stunning and revolutionary in some aspects, but sales would make you think it was a dud. For a company to compete with Madden without the NFL licensethey'd have to make a game 3 times better, and to beat Madden it would have to be 10 times better, and although I never thought Madden was the best football game it was never 10 times worse than the others, except for Madden '94 when compared to Montana '94. Montana '94 was incredible.

[On The Edge of Insanity]

I hope Sega/Visual Concepts just brings out a totally unlicensed version of their game next year, just changing the player names so that they are spelt wrong, and obviously having to just call the teams by their region rather than their franchise name, change the badges and whatnot. Just focus 100% on the gameplay and try and make a far superior game to the Madden game that comes out. Althought they obviously won't sell as much due to them lacking the official license, at least it will give some choice to the consumer, and at least make EA consider that they still have some form of competition.