Take Two announced at the end of January that, after taking a short hiatus, a football game will be returning to their 2k sports lineup. I have to say that I was somewhat excited to hear this as I was a fan of the old ESPN NFL 2k5. I'm glad to see that some competition is returning to the market for football games. Personally, I think EA has gotten lazy. The past couple versions of Madden have mostly been $50 ($60 for a next-gen console) roster updates, the game hasn't done anything really innovative in years.
The news has left me wondering though. The reason that football was dropped from the 2k sports lineup to begin with was the licensing contract that the NFL and its players union signed with EA back in '04-05. The contract granted EA exclusive rights to all NFL players, teams and stadiums for 5 years. Now my math may not be great but it would seem to me that 5 years from 2004 would be 2009 and Take2's new game is coming out the summer of 2007. It seems clear that the new game can not use anything related to the NFL. The title of the game, "All-Pro Football 2K8," seems to confirm that this game is not based on the NFL as it clearly does not make any reference to it.
It would seem that the players, teams, and stadiums that are used would have to be made up or not be under the control of the NFL. There are many options for how they could handle this problem, use made up player names, teams, etc, maybe mix in some retired NFL players who aren't in the players' union anymore, hell they could even base the rosters on the Canadian Football League if they wanted. They could do any or all these things, but that doesn't mean people would want to play it. When you go to play an NFL based game, you already know who the good players are, you know what team you want to play as and who the good players on that team are. Not having the rosters that everyone already knows puts the game at a big disadvantage from the start.
This may actually be good news though. The game is at a disadvantage and the designers at Take2 know it. If they have any hope of competing with Madden, they need to put out a truly amazing game based on game-play and fun factor alone. If they can successfully pull it off, then I'll play Falcons vs Schmangi instead of Jets vs Eagles. I don't think the same can be said about the current iterations of Madden.
1 comment:
To reiterate Falcon's point, the changes in EA's games from year to year are for the most part minimal be it Tiger Woods Golf, Fifa Soccer, Madden, NBA Live, NHL, etc. As I am not a huge sports gamer one copy of a sports genre will usually last me the life of the console, esp at $60 dollars a pop. EA better start making a game's fun-factor a priority otherwise they definitely will see a slump in their future sales.
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