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[Lazy8s]

It's not uncommon for old games to be reissued if the demand is there, and there is no law against retailers selling outdated versions of any sports title. Sega had acquired an official NFL license for "ESPN Football", and the League probably would've made sure in contract that the terms of that license stay in effect for the life of the product, however long, to ensure that they receive their royalty for every copy that ever got sold. It's also not an uncommon practice for game companies to continue to tweak and alter games after they've already been released in earlier shipments, and the official license already allows for some degree of roster and NFL property updates to a game. Perhaps Sega Sammy could develop ESPN NFL 2K6 to some extent and release it as a reissue of "ESPN NFL Football".

Would the NFL have thought to draw up licensing terms back then to prevent against any of this? Could they have thought to regulate the specifics of a game reissue from their licensors if their financial interests were already covered by permanence in the original terms and royalty (and probably extra specified already to have the royalty fee revalued yearly for the NFL to keep the price up-to-date) unless they were specifically planning to prevent any loopholes in giving away future exclusivity? Did Microsoft ever rerelease the first NFL Fever later as a Platinum Hit as precedent? It would be interesting if Sega Sammy could find a way to go on selling new NFL games under the terms of their old license while EA was stuck with an extra expensive new 'exclusive' license.

 

[Triumph]

A better question would be, could they tie their own shoes without mommy's help?

 

[Willco]

Lazy8s
Christ I'm Stupid III:
Too Dumb to Die

.... ahhhhhh.

 

[AstroLad]

Hahaha... no.

They could, however, likely do an "update" of this product with little potential for litigation:

 

[FitzOfRage]

Well one big problem right off the bat s that even under the old agreement, the NFL has final approval over every single aspect of any game featuring the NFL license. So even when it comes to tweaking, the NFL has to approve it, and they're obviously not going to approve any changes to existing products from anyone else now.

At the most, they would be stuck selling ESPN as it is, with absolutely no changes (including the packaging), because the NFL won't approve any further modifications.

And the real crux of this deal I think is that it covers next gen systems. For casual players, ESPN 2K5 on the PS2 will likely hold up pretty well against Madden 2006 on the PS2 at a glance. But there's going to be no comparison with next gen versions of Madden.

But it's also possible there is a lmited window for manufacturing the games anyway (like 18 months or so), which would work because publishers would be working under the assumptions that:

1) the market for old sports games drops dramatically, so publisher wouldn't even want to be pumping out new copies of a 2 or 3 year old game.

2) they would be developing a new game anyway.

3) if for some strange reason the games were putting up huge numbers years after release, it wouldn't be hard to negotiate an extension.

 

[Phoenix]

All they need to do is go back to 4th and Inches (which was always a heck of a lot of fun)

Willie Pass
R. U. Thayer
Mack Truck

...

etc.

 

[monkeyrun]

well Sega could always make XFL games :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol