EA CFO's Comments not an Indication of MVP's Return (Story Updated)

[RaychelSnr]

MVP Baseball 2005.

In a talk yesterday at the Wedbush Technology Conference, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said that the company was considering adding, "a couple of new sports franchises" to the companies lineup.

Jorgenson continued, "For us, the big opportunities continue to be the FIFA franchise, the Battlefield franchise and then the core sports of Madden, NCAA, NHL, adding NBA and possibly a couple of new sports franchises along that way. Clearly, that's a big strength of the company and we want to continue that."

What Jorgenson didn't say, and what sports gamers are inevitably concerned about is does this mean already known licensed properties such as the UFC license, or could it mean a return of MVP Baseball in the coming year?

Jorgenson gave no indication of what his words truly meant, so you can take them however you will. NBA Live and UFC are both expected to see releases within the next year from EA and they are certainly 'new' sports titles as neither have appeared in EA's release lineup in recent years. But Jorgenson's comments seemed to indicate there was a possibility of a third title which hasn't been mentioned yet.

MLB Baseball makes the most sense, with Take Two's third party license expired once again, its clear the MLB wants a strong publisher presence on the XBox platform. Given the minimal effort it seems that was put into MLB 2K13, it seems clearly possible this year was used as a stopgap year for another publisher to get a franchise online. But for now, we can only wait to see what comes of the MLB licensing situation. [Polygon]

[Update]: Owen at Kotaku received an update from EA. "Blake's referring to UFC and the ongoing evolution of our biggest sports titles into new markets and on new platforms (like FIFA Online 3 in Korea, FIFA on mobile in Japan, Madden on mobile)."

So perhaps we can put the MVP talk to bed? At least for now...

[mike24forever]

We can only hope. I would be happy with them releasing MVP 05 on the vita with updated rosters.

[savoie2006]

I think they would have far better luck trying to bring back MVP than NBA, which has oviously lost it's direction. The only negative is if MVP was even close to its former glory, it would surely mean the death of MLB 2K.

[Ordeal47]

its*... just sayin'.

[Rufio2031]

March Madness!!??

[ktd1976]

even if it was a return of the MVP franchise, it would take them at least 2 development years to get to the level of The Show. The Show is the ultimate MLB simulation, and as a PS3 owner, there is no way I would make the switch now.

That said, I feel for XBox owners, who only have one choice when it comes to a Baseball video game. It would be great for them.

[Money99]

If the license agreement makes sense financially, I highly doubt EA won't get back into the baseball business.
That's the only reason they walked away in '05.
MLB would be dumb to price themselves out of a partnership with EA.

[JerseySuave4]

Quote: Originally Posted by ktd1976

even if it was a return of the MVP franchise, it would take them at least 2 development years to get to the level of The Show. The Show is the ultimate MLB simulation, and as a PS3 owner, there is no way I would make the switch now. That said, I feel for XBox owners, who only have one choice when it comes to a Baseball video game. It would be great for them.

New systems come out this holiday season anyway so they'd be starting on a new system. But games like MLB 2k & EA MVP baseball are multi-platform games while MLB the Show is only on Playstation so they have the ability to utilize everything the 1 system can do instead of having to compensate for both systems.