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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."
So that's it now huh? EA owns the rights to all the football teams that matter. Wow... I don't play football games, but I really feel for all the poor bastards doomed to play a rehash of Madden 2000 for the next 5 years. Way to innovate EA...
Note to self: Continue boycotting all EA products
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
"...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.
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.
I understand that this is less important or completely unimportant to some people. Personally, I could care less what any of EA's other games do. However, when I play my college football games, I expect it to be just like my experience at Arkansas from the fight song to calling the hogs to the huge SmartVision scoreboard that you can see from 5 miles away. I don't want to have to enter statistics for a 70 player roster (names I can tolerate) so I can have a team that plays like the Razorbacks. If it doesn't feel like a college football game or if I'm not playing with my team, they can take it elsewhere because I'm not paying for it.
They weren't. NCAA Football has been the only EA game that I have ever liked, but even it is starting to spiral down the toilet by "fixing" things that weren't broken to begin with. My personal favorite is how they fixed pass defense by making it impossible to catch a pass. (Great work, fellas!)There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.