Honestly, this doesn't annoy me much at all and makes me less annoyed at EA's NFL exclusivity. Now the lines are being drawn somewhat. Before it looked as though EA would gobble up all the sports licenses and leave other companies high and dry. Now we see that Take 2 can and is firing back.
I'm not real cool with anything that stops competition, but as long as both sides are handicapping one another its not so bad.
The NBA sim/arcade/portable battle should be interesting. The sim line is a toss up between EA and T2/VC, Arcade should probably go to EA, and portable, well, we'll wait and see if we should even care (i.e. if any good portable hoops games are made). EA better fight hard for at least the sim or arcade lines though, because if T2 gets the sim line and Midway gets the arcade line (which I'm sure they'll be making a big push for, its one of their big things), EA and NBA Street will get left out in the cold. Thats a strong selling franchise that they really can't afford to loose.
Who knows if the NHL is going to come back, but when it does it could also turn into another point of contention. I think T2 will have the edge there though, they have the critically acclaimed hockey game, and if I recall it sells at least on par with EA's efforts. EA doesn't have as profitable an outlook with the sport as T2/VC/Kush does.
If anyone can beat other companies for the rights to FIFA that'd be insanely huge, but I'd be surprised if that'd happen. Said company would need to basically forsake all profits to hurt the competition, since FIFA would be looking for a monsterous check.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. It doesn't look like its going to help make games better, but it also doesn't look like the baseball bat to the knees of sports gaming that this exclusive rights buying looked to be when EA landed two of the three professional Am. Football leagues worth mentioning (NFL and AFL, CFL is the only one left).
I'm not real cool with anything that stops competition, but as long as both sides are handicapping one another its not so bad.
The NBA sim/arcade/portable battle should be interesting. The sim line is a toss up between EA and T2/VC, Arcade should probably go to EA, and portable, well, we'll wait and see if we should even care (i.e. if any good portable hoops games are made). EA better fight hard for at least the sim or arcade lines though, because if T2 gets the sim line and Midway gets the arcade line (which I'm sure they'll be making a big push for, its one of their big things), EA and NBA Street will get left out in the cold. Thats a strong selling franchise that they really can't afford to loose.
Who knows if the NHL is going to come back, but when it does it could also turn into another point of contention. I think T2 will have the edge there though, they have the critically acclaimed hockey game, and if I recall it sells at least on par with EA's efforts. EA doesn't have as profitable an outlook with the sport as T2/VC/Kush does.
If anyone can beat other companies for the rights to FIFA that'd be insanely huge, but I'd be surprised if that'd happen. Said company would need to basically forsake all profits to hurt the competition, since FIFA would be looking for a monsterous check.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. It doesn't look like its going to help make games better, but it also doesn't look like the baseball bat to the knees of sports gaming that this exclusive rights buying looked to be when EA landed two of the three professional Am. Football leagues worth mentioning (NFL and AFL, CFL is the only one left).