Exclusivity is a bad thing.
The fallout has begun.
Electronic Arts (EA) inked a deal with the NFL to be the sole producer of licensed NFL video games for the next five years. They followed this up with Arena Football and ESPN. In the middle of this, the NBA told EA to get bent.
This week, Take Two Interactive signed a 7-year exclusive deal with Major League Baseball.
The response thus far: Sega has sold their sports division to Take Two, and bailed on sports games entirely.
Why is this a bad thing, you ask? After all, you say, won’t everyone make more money on these deals? That’s as may be, but guess what happens? There’s no competition. Absent competition, EA and Take Two are free to release absolute shit games to the market, and there’s fuck-all anyone can do about it.
What? Madden 2007 is the most ass-biting game ever? Guess What? Nobody else can make a football game that uses the teams, players, play books, arenas, or anything else that is part of the NFL. And if you aren’t playing NFL football, what’s the point?
This kind of exclusivity destroys innovation. EA had a similar deal with Porsche. They released one game, Need for Speed, Porsche Unleashed. The game was mediocre at best. But, since EA held all the licensing rights, there are no Porsches in any other video games. What this means is that when it says on the back of Gran Turismo 3 (which is the best car simulator ever written) where it says “all the top auto manufacturers”, it’s not quite correct - because there’s one missing.
We as customers and consumers of video games lose when these kinds of exclusive deals get signed. Video games allow us to live fantasies. I could never be a quarterback in the NFL, I’m too old, and besides, I have the physical coordination of a great dane on acid. But I can put a disc in my Gamecube and I’m Tom Brady. There are precious few places in the US where I could drive a car at 200 miles an hour, and even if I could afford to get to those places, I can’t afford the car! But thanks to Polyphony Digital and Sony, I can drive a Panoz into a wall, and not lose the rest of my life’s earnings in the process.
Imagine if Sony signed an exclusive deal with Panoz, and then decided to give the GT series to a bunch of amateur developers because they didn’t want to pay Polyphony any more? We’d be left with the choice of a game that bites ass, or no game at all.
I know which choice I’d pick (hint, I don’t like games that suck). I doubt most people would do the same, however. And the end result of this is that EA has no incentive to keep Madden to the standards that they did before, with Visual Concepts, 989, and others nipping at their heels.