EA Disparages Take-Two's MLB Deal

Gamespot has the news that EA's corporate communications vice president Jeff Brown sees the MLB deal as 'stupid money'. From the article: "As far as we're concerned, this looks like stupid money. They are paying an exclusive price for a nonexclusive agreement."

Comments

License is important

[tm2b]

A lot of people replying to this seem to think that the only significant allure to a baseball game is to, well, play baseball. That is, to simulate hitting a ball and running around bases, or to catch the ball and throw it to the right person fast enough.

That's not what this is about. Many, many people (I believe probably the majority of these games' customer base) are interested not in the game as an abstract activity, but as competition among the teams and players they know so well.

They're already personally involved with the characters, both sympathetically and antagonistically- viewing this as about the game of baseball is like ignoring the difference between a random space opera shooter with some new characters and a licensed Star Wars game where you can play Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo, or Boba Fett and where you can kill Jar Jar Binks. It's providing interaction with the characters they know.