EA Games and NFL players association

Well, I won't be buying any more EA Sports games. Today, EA announced that it has reached an agreement with the NFL Player's association, granting EA the exclusive rights to the players names, team names, and stadiums in their games.

ESPN NFL 2k4, EA's main competitor to the madden series of games, was sold at almost half the price of the madden games. The games were cutting into EA's market share, so they secured and exclusive deal.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for EA to do what they did. They have every right to pay more money for exclusive rights. I'm just saying that I don't like it, so I won't be supporting any more of their games. ESPN and Sega put out a great game that was marketed in a better fashion than EA Sports, so instead of trying to compete through gameplay, they just threw their weight around and got the exclusive rights to the NFL's property.

Why doesn't EA just come out and say... "Our costs are too high. We can't and don't really want to lower our margins to ESPN's level. We don't want to have to actually compete to deliver a better product. That would be what's best for the consumer. So, we just decided to go ahead and create a monopoly on the players people idolize and make it that much harder for the other guys to compete on a level playing field. Consumers, your ability to choose is not our major concern."

Isn't that what capitalism is about? Another person/group comes along and offers a better product at a better price, so you have to either innovate, create a better product, or die? Well, not if you're EA. You're sitting on piles of cash, so just stuff the players association full of cash and make a large part of your problem go away.

Well, ESPN and Sega, I hope you get your heads together and offer people the ability to customize their rosters. Downloadable rosters will be available in no time. It's what we want. The ability to modify logos and rosters. The ability to choose a different style of gameplay and still play as the players we like, both at a low cost.

Posted by Jordan at December 14, 2004 09:00 AM | TrackBack