EA Kills Competition

I'm betting just about everyone who owns a playstation, xbox, gamecube, computer, or even portable game systems has probably played a sports game or two. Maybe sports games are even your favorite type of game. The only sports games I've liked playing have been football and NBA basketball. Every couple of years I'll pick up the newest version of an NBA or NFL game to whet my sporting appetite. This year was my sports game buying year so I picked up ESPN's NFL Football for Xbox. I was totally floored by how good the game was and it blew away Madden, which I had played in Best Buy and other places when I needed to waste time. I'd never been a huge fan of the Madden games, but most years they were the only thing on the market of quality.

Not this year. ESPN's game was stunning and Madden got its ass handed to it. I had actually planned on possibly buying the new version of ESPN every year if it was going to be as good, year in and year out, as it was this year... that is until EA and the NFL ruined all hope for competition in the football video game market.

For more than 300 million dollars EA bought the exclusive rights to the NFL and NFLPA for video game usage. This means that EA is the only company who will be able to create and sell video games using the NFL and its players. This is sick. ESPN shows them that they aren't the shit, like they thought they were, so instead of trying to make a better game they just kill off all competition. Wow. Yet another reason to hate EA.

I am just floored by this for two reasons. Reason 1: I won't have a new football game to play for quite a few years since I refuse to buy anything from EA anymore. Reason 2: The NFL is shooting itself in the foot. They might be getting 300 million dollars now, but who's to say that they couldn't have made even more by possibly charging more to both Take Two Interactive and EA and letting their competition drive prices up? I guess they didn't think they could.

*Sigh* Looks like I'll just have to focus on playing basketball video games for my sports fix now instead of football. Oh, by the way, if you want to sign and online petition against this business deal, go here. I really doubt it will do anything, but you might as well do it if you have a few seconds to spare.