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Take-Two Cements MLB Rights

Posted by Zonk on from the cement-in-the-shoes-no-doubt dept.

GamesIndustry.biz has a story on Take-Two interactive and their efforts to tighten up agreements with Major League Baseball. From the article: "As with the MLBPA deal, the new arrangement gives Take Two exclusive rights among third party publishers only..but a loophole identified by many analysts has been sealed up, with third party publishers prohibited from developing and releasing titles in partnership with the platform holders."

2 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Take Two Wins; Consumer is ultimate loser by Skuggamara · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While it's a shame to see these exclusive (or semi-exclusive as the article points out) deals being made, it is nice to see Electronic Arts getting a bit of it's own medicine.

    These exclusive deals are bad for the games industry and bad for the consumer as they stifle innovation and competition from smaller, more creative game developers.

    1. Re:Take Two Wins; Consumer is ultimate loser by fireduck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't normally follow sports games, so I didn't really think there were than many MLB games available. So this really couldn't have been that bad a deal? Wrong. Just a quick look at Gamecube baseball titles shows we've got baseball games from Acclaim (All Star Baseball), Infogrames (backyard baseball), Sega (home run king), Midway (MLB slugfest) and MVP Baseball (EA). 5 different developers, not one of which is Nintendo. This'll get paired down to 1 developer next year. That is a big blow to innovation/competition.

      Interesting thing about these games, is that there's not a single non-MLB licensed baseball game available for the GC. One of the counter arguments is that locking up MLB (or any other sports association), frees other developers to be more independent. However, the lack of non-name brand sports games indicates that there really isn't much of a market for non-League games.

      Although to be fair, there are 2 non-NBA games (one by disney) and 2 non-NFL games (disney + an ncaa game) out there (but one can't honestly expect the disney games to appeal to adults). So in all the currently available sports games for the 3 big sports, there's really only 2 that don't involve a national professional league. I guess that makes your choice a bit easier.