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EA Signs College Football License Deal
Yet another license falls into the hands of the EA sports game crafters. The Business Wire is reporting that EA Games has signed a six year agreement with the Collegiate Licensing Company. This allows EA the exclusive use of teams, stadiums, etc, etc. From the article: "Our NCAA football franchise is a key element in our EA SPORTS brand lineup and we are pleased to have secured the NCAA license...There is an unrivaled loyalty our fans have for the game, and this agreement with CLC allows EA to continue to deliver to fans the best, most innovative college football experience now and for years to come."
Hmmm, EA gets another sports exclusive. Nothing to see here folks!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
If other developers actually developed College Football Games.
Unfortunately now other developers won't even get that chance.
Now for college sports! woot!
Who buys this crap anyway?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I just can't wait untill EA unpredictably take the franchise and make a wholly uninspiring series of games and win in the market via massive marketing rather then any real attempt at innovative game concepts or quality....
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
After they locked up the NFL, other developers may have been eyeing the NCAA as an alternative.
That's been taken care of now thanks to EA's innovative Let no customer choice go unremoved campaign.
"...this agreement with CLC allows EA to continue to deliver to fans the best, most innovative college football experience now and for years to come."
Why the outright lie, EA? The people who read these press releases aren't the ones who'll fall for that dummy logic. We already know that these agreements only "allow" EA to monopolize the authenticity of the respective sports involved.
What's interesting about this, though, is that NCAA games have always had restrictions - player names have been forbidden for years, and yet gamers haven't balked and been upset. This'll cripple competitors' use of official songs, logos, team names and mascots, but this is the one category of sports game "monopolies" that might actually work out for competitors.
Not to mention, this all will wind up creating backdoor, Internet-assisted "player editing" capabilities in competitors' games. PS2 and XBox Internet users will certainly be able to sneakily insert all the "official" information into the games. At least, I hope.
Heard about this earlier in the morning from this place,http://www.gamercentric.com/index.php?page=v iewnews&id=3544. EA practically owns football gaming now. Ridiculous.
Pick your applicable Slashdot response here:
1. EA is evil
2. This is a monopoly, aren't monopolies illegal?
3. OMG isn't someone going to do something about this?
3a. Let's boycott EA!
4. Blah blah blah, just don't buy the game, you have this right as a consumer, blah blah.
5. Random Nostalgia Comment about playing some football game with mutants, and how there still a possibility for innovation (hint, not very likely at all).
6. Comment about all Madden games after '92 sucking ass.
Am I missing anything?
You see, this is rather odd. They'll post that EA's and Sega's line of games from the past have been nothing but a series of roster updates but they'll also post that EA will no longer innovate without competition.
I just think that the vast majority of people who post in the games section don't have an appreciation and do not enjoy sports video games.
Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
Since it's college football, it simulates going to class, which can hurt your team if there is a cheating scandal or a star player has to sit it out due to bad grades.
It also simulates the players getting all the money on the side, the payola from the school to play for them. Shows how the players intimidate the legit students and get away literally with murder.
Shows the drunken parties with the hookers flown in by the booster clubs to keep their players happy. And then the drop out players who are so good they just bypass the un-needed education to go play for a pro team and get that endorsement deal from Nike while showing the real students struggling with college loans and debt while actually trying contribute something of substance to the world.
Sounds great!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
...I'm reminded of the fact that I never have, and never will, play a sport simulation game. Then I smile. Then I shed a tear over the crushed Crunch bar.
And then I smile again.
Maybe EA will get off of its ass and make NCAA Football for the PC, instead of just PS2, because they'll need to try to recoup the license cost? I hope so, because I wanted to try the game out, but couldn't...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Today was going too well, so I needed a good kick to the face to bring me back to reality, thanks.
Really enjoyed College Hoops 2k5, too, and now it looks like that's gone.
"Am I missing anything?"
Yeah..."We're geeks, sports suck, who cares".
The last time there was a story that touched on Football here, there were a lot of posts along the lines of "I hate sports, the jocks beat me up in high school", etc. The whole "geeks have to be wusses that hate sports" thing chaps my ass.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Ha ha ha....funniest post I've read all day, and it's from a Troll. If the truth hurts...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Lovely; now EA can charge through the nose because no one else makes college games.
What really sucks here is that in the pros, the players union can negotiate their own game deals; "The official game of NFL Players", that sort of thing. There's no such option for college ball.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That was the funniest post you've read all day? Dude, you need to get out more.
Folks, wait a few minutes until IGN, One Up, or any of the game publications post a rehash of this press release before submitting it to Slashdot - then it will be real news. The source, Business Wire, is a newswire service for hire and does not publish real news, but company press releases paid for by the company. Note the positive only, very upbeat tone and marketing jargon quoted whole in the post. Only after a press release is picked up by a journalist who then embellishes the release with quotes and commentary does a press release become News. Citing Business Wire as a source undermines the credibility of the post making it look like a plant from EA's PR Dept. No offense to the poster - the slashdot editor should not have allowed this.
It will be interesting to see how this "story" gets covered by the game "journalists." How much will they copy and paste into their story?
Let the obligatory bashing of EA begin! ;)
(Death to all companies that try to act in their best interest!...or something like that)
And I wonder what will happen if say the next couple Madden's turn out to be surprisingly good?...I wonder if people will eat their words, or not...
Apparently EA is showing what happens when you try to undercut them at retail (as in Sega lowering the price of their games to $20).
In other news EA has signed an exclusive licensing deal with Italy, for the exclusive rights to the likeness of short, fat, mustached, Italian plumbers.
people may bash EA, and maybe rightly so, but you have to hand it to them. They cornered the market on 'Street Racing' games with the new Need For Speed Undergrounds, and anything they can't get market control of, they buy exclusive rights to.
Some very smart businessmen there, shame it means the consumer doesn't always get the best
Business Voyeur
They cornered the market on 'Street Racing' games with the new Need For Speed Undergrounds
This on the day before Midnight Club 3 comes out.
Dipshit.
The correct term is "mustachioed".
Thank you.
Get out where? There are posts outside now?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I'm wondering if EA's getting all of these licenses so that if they eventually decide to make their own console they automatically have 100% of the sports gamers out there since they'll be left with no where else to get their fix of Madden and EA's other sports series. I myself wouldn't be influenced by that since I AM one of those people who thinks that there's little innovation in the sports games over the years and are mostly just roster upgrades, but every year Madden is one of the top selling games so I can see that most people either don't care or don't agree with me on that issue (except on SlashDot, it seems evident that I'm not alone in thinking this). So what I'm getting at is that if EA did decide to make their own console one of these generations, these exclusive deals could easily help turn the tides of console wars in their favor.
but... i realize this is a pipe dream. EA will milk us for all we're worth, hoping we'll buy both games.
For the purchasers of the licenses -- everything's peachy. However, for the gamers -- it is simply awful.
Electronic Arts has got the NFL, ESPN and NCAA Football. Take-Two has snagged up MLB.
Now, can anybody explain to me why any publisher is going to work with any developer to create a sports game featuring fictional teams and players? The fact of the matter is that particular genre of gaming lives and dies by producing products as close to the on-field (court, ice, whatever) product as possible. And when was the last time a major sports title carried fictional teams and players?
The scary thing is with the exclusive rights, why should a company like EA really attempt to improve the technology and gameplay of their Madden franchise now? EA's got the only true "real" NFL product now.
And why should Take-Two bother creating another professional football game? Sure, Take-Two can create a realistic playing football game, but you've shot yourself in the foot when you've got Patrick Minning throwing touchdowns to Reginald Mayne for the Indiana Studs. Take-Two/Sega couldn't outsell the competition even with the NFL license, and so what is going to happen now...?
The whole deal is great for those companies who hold the license but I just think it is a scary trend that is going to do nothing but hurt the overall quality of the games and, more importantly, gamers.
EA's voracious appetite for liscense simply cannot be sated. It's interesting to see how a company controlled by satan and full of soulless CEO's and Designers can swallow up every last ounce of freedom in what was once a gloriously open source industry.
Society never gets more or less violent, the definition of violent just keeps changing.
I'm not a sports fan, so I hate all sports videogames. They are crap. Period. And keep companies like EA alive.
However, I have my own opinion on this.
I don't believe this is THAT bad. Konami, for example, has had success for years with it's Pro Evolution Soccer series, in fact, since the days of the SNES (on that console, it was called International Super Star Soccer)
Most soccer and sport videogames fan agree that Konami's product is vastly superior. The only thing against it is that Konami has to use fake names for the soccer players, fake logos, etc. But they still sell crapload of Pro Evolution.
So other companies should try to make a better game, even without licenses.
At a conference the executives at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft sit around looking at a large video monitor.
Sony: "What happen?"
Nintendo: "Somebody set up us the bomb!"
Microsoft: "We get signal."
Dr EA: "How are you gentlemen?"
Dr EA: "All your football are belong to us."
Sony: "What you say?!"
Dr EA: "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Dr EA: "UNLESS, you pay us 100 BILLION DOLLARS!"
Dr EA puts pinky to corner of mouth.
Nintendo: "For great justice!"
Dr EA: "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!"
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer