How would sports games be different if EA hadn’t bought the NFL license and stopped making baseball games? Would things be better? Would things be the same? It’s kind of a tough question to answer, but one that I know a lot of people have been wondering. Let’s see if we can find out by playing psychic (not Ms. Cleo).
Let’s start with football games, shall we?
For us to do that, we have to go back to before EA bought out the NFL license (end of 2004). The amount of variety for NFL games was already limited, because by then many franchises like NFL Blitz, NFL Fever, and NFL Gameday were pretty much either on their way out, or already gone at this point. The only real competition that EA’s Madden had was ESPN 2K5 (best game ever); 2K5‘s gameplay better than Madden, and the $19.99 price tag caused EA to panic and slash their usual $49.99 game to $29.99.
ESPN 2K5 came out a couple weeks before Madden, which gave gamers a chance to play it before the competition. There were a lot of people who still bought Madden (me included – I had both), and it was obvious to many who had the better product. Gamers, magazines, and websites alike were pretty much saying that ESPN 2K5 was the superior football experience, and EA was starting to feel the competition.
Fast forward to December 2004 when EA bought the NFL license, which granted EA the sole rights to the NFL’s teams, stadiums, and players. But what if they didn’t do that, and any company was allowed to make an NFL game? Now, I’m not going to sit here and say anything foolish like, “Madden games would’ve been cancelled,” but I do think that with the evolution of the NFL 2K franchise, it would’ve created competition, which meant better games from all parties involved. Madden has just recently started implementing the level of presentation that NFL 2K did back in ’04, most likely because they felt no pressure to do it sooner. With all the technological advances and the number of video game studios out there, we could’ve had a plethora (sorry, Stephen A. Smith) of games to choose from without having the choice made for us. As funny as it is to say this, we have to blame Visual Concepts for making such an amazing game.
Let’s move on to baseball.
EA isn’t the king of every sport. In 2007, they had to stop making MVP Baseball because Take Two interactive struck a deal until 2012. In between that time, we got the MLB 2K series, and the greatness that is MLB The Show (made by SCE San Diego). Let’s just say that after 2012, EA decided to jump back into the fold and started to release either more MVP Baseball games, or just more MLB games period. EA did a phenomenal job with the MVP franchise, and I don’t think that they would have been top dog (that’ll still belong to MLB The Show), but I do think it would’ve been a close second considering how bad the MLB 2K franchise got to be.
Last but not least, I HAVE to touch on the lack of college basketball games (meaning, none).
After a 14-year run publishing NCAA March Madness, EA Sports discontinued its college basketball title in 2009. Its only competition, 2K Sports’ NCAA series, stopped publishing new college hoops titles in 2008. (Online servers stayed up until 2012, but even those are gone now.) 2K didn’t want to go after the college license for another year, which meant that EA had no competition. The lack of competition really showed, as they released the truly awful NCAA Basketball 09 and NCAA Basketball 10 (formerly known as March Madness). Take out the lawsuits and 2K not wanting to make college basketball games anymore, and just think for a second about how things could’ve turned out differently. College Hoops 2K8 was one of the best college basketball games I’ve ever played (except for Coach K College Basketball on Sega Genesis). It just embodied the whole college basketball experience from gameplay all the way down to presentation. If both companies did decide to keep making college basketball games, then I could really see this going the same the way their NBA counterparts, with the 2K College Hoops series really dominating this field based on how good the 2K basketball games are. That’s not to say an up-and-coming studio couldn’t have made a great college basketball game, but considering that there was hardly anyone making them at the time, we will never know. College basketball games are pretty much an untapped market, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
I do feel like that if we had more competition then developers would put more effort into their video games. With so many companies folding (989 Studios, Midway) and taking their games with them, who’s to say that the choices we have wouldn’t be as limited as they are today? There was a time when we had many different options, but still ended up playing the same franchises. However, just knowing that the options were out there gave us the choice instead of having it made for us. It really comes down to this question: Would you rather have a variety of under-developed games like NBA 06-NBA 10, or just have 2 to 3 high quality games out there?
I’d personally take the latter, but all we can do is ask ourselves is, “What if?”
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The Scoop Entertainment 