Sega Done with Sports, Take-Two Launches Label

Gamespot has the news that Take-Two Interactive's MLB deal has already had repercussions. Sega has gotten out of the sports business, selling their internal sports studio Visual Concepts to Take-Two for a bargain price. This newest addition in hand, Take-Two has turned around and launched a new game label entitled 2K games. From the article: "2K Games will incorporate Take-Two's internally owned development studios Visual Concepts, Kush Games, Indie Built, Venom Games, PopTop Software, and Frog City Software, as well as the team at Take-Two Licensing..." This new label will have a subsidiary specifically tuned for sports titles. As expected, it appears the sports game market is now going to fall to only a few companies. Commentary on Greg Costikyan's Blog

Comments

Sega Done with Sports?

[Castaa]

I can see it now at EA's corporate offices:

<mr. burns> Excellent... </mr. burns>

Its a real shame too...

[angst7]

I was very pleasently suprised by the great job Sega did with NFL 2K5, and with a $20 price tag it was an unbeatable choice. Unbeatable unless you are EA games protecting your Madden franchise. When I heard they bought exclusive rights I was pretty annoyed. This sort of practice is completely understandable from the prospective of the company seeking to keep market share. But as a customer it still pisses me off. I'm thinking I'll not be buying any sports games for quite a few years.

Oh, the irony...

[physicsphairy]

...the irony of computer geeks staying at home playing physical sports on their computers.

Well, I'm not really one to talk: the only 'sport' I play is chess. (I wonder what the odds are of 2K making a killer chess engine?)

Duke Nukem Forever

[lateralus_1024]

Will this have a negative impact on the Duke Nukem Forever ship date?

Years too late

[halcyon1234]

Why couldn't have Sega gotten out of the sports market YEARS ago? If they had, there'd be better Genesis selections in the Rummage Bin than the standard "50000 copies of Madden '94"

Re:Oh yeah, Sega

[badasscat]

Is Sega the new Apple?

They're not the "new" Apple, they're more comparable to the Apple of the mid 1980's. You know, a company without a clear direction, (hopefully) approaching the bottom end of their inverse market share bell curve. I still say that getting out of the hardware market is the worst thing Sega ever did - the effect it had was to completely demoralize the company. Many of their top creative minds left the company, and those that remained just haven't seemed to be putting their hearts into the games they've been creating lately.

I guess my main argument with your statement (part of which I didn't quote, but it's there) is that Sega still makes "very good games". Visual Concepts, their sports studio, made some decent sports sims (though NFL 2K5 was buggy as all hell), but Sega themselves haven't made anything I've been excited about since Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube.

As for this deal, don't forget that part of the deal is that Visual Concepts make games for Sega's arcade business. So to Sega's mind, this probably puts them back where they were in the early 80's only without having to do any of the actual work. Not sure it's actually going to play out that way, though; it doesn't seem like Sega has much of a future to me. Wouldn't be surprised if they get bought themselves at some point (something I argued would never happen 10 years ago, but times change and the mighty have fallen and fallen hard).

btw, I do believe Sega is actually profitable, but at the cost of, to quote George Costanza, "significant shrinkage." They seem to contract further and further every year and it's the only way they've kept their head above water. This is not how you succeed in business - to succeed in business requires both profitability and growth. Sega is in no position to grow and at this rate will eventually implode; they will cease to exist even as an IP holding company, as they will have sold off everything worthwhile to other publishers.

Good

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know what? I'm glad. I know this is entirely inevitable, as the companies seek to dominate the market as best they can. This is bad. However, this also means that there will inevitably be a company that is smaller, more agile, and more creative who will eventually shatter any stranglehold they have on the market. Remember guys, people looked past the fact that Grand Theft Auto didn't license car names. It was the gameplay that was revolutionary. Sports games are the same way. The names are important, but anybody can spoof them without needing a license (parody law?).

But now I can't think why I honestly care about this. I don't like sports games at all. I don't play physical sports outside, why would I want to be subjected to them on the computer as well?