EA and NFL extend exclusive agreement for 3 more years......
 

Seriously, why doesn't EA just go f%$^ itself? I sure hope that there's another company brave enough to come out with a generic pro football game because I now have to wait until at least 2013 before I consider the possibility of purchasing a NFL game.

damn

I bowed out of the Madden Franchise two years ago. I don't see going back anytime soon...

suck it, game geeks

Wow. Today is going to be an unhappy day for a lot of sports gamers. I think I just decided to never buy an EA sports game new again. If I break down, I'll buy games used.

I've decided to lag a year behind and pick them up for $10.
At this point, that is all they are worth to me.

I'm still playing 07 on the original Xbox. The lack of innovation is the number one reason I've avoided buying a next gen system and prefer PC games or old Xbox games like KOTOR or older Madden games.

I'm not even sure that EA has any clue what the customer is thinking at this point.

1. Last year's incident where an EA rep went on the Operation Sports board to ask what people thought of the NBA Live improvements, only to get blasted by the entire community. He even acted surprised about the backlash.
2. Rather than bringing out a new Fight Night game, they decided to make an arcade version of the game titled 'Facebreaker'. It's little more than a upgraded version of Ready 2 Rumble boxing. That's not going to go over well.
3. All of their games suffer from the 'roster update' mentality, resulting in people paying $60 for a minor upgrade at a full price. Nagging bugs that continue to show up year after year with no apparent work to fix the problems also hinder the games.

I'm not sure how much more evidence they need to understand just how badly EA Sports' image has suffered.

And even for those "that's just internet geeks" folks - just look at the consistently shrinking sales for Madden. Yeah, they're still high - but they're definitely shrinking.

I agree with you that the situation sucks. But I think that you are looking at it from the perspective of the mega-informed gamer.

While people here raise legit concerns about the direction of EA sports, guys like Bill Simmons say that Madden Day should be a national holiday. And guys like Bill Simmons (and the vast majority of his readers) buy enough games to keep the game companies happy.

Edit--Just saw Wade's post. I'm not sure how the numbers for Madden are. If they are shrinking, then that does have to be cause for concern. I'm sure that they'll find a way to blame it on piracy and used game stores, though.

I don't know if I want to go here, but... Is EA Sports really suffering because of this? Have sales of Madden and NCAA Football been declining?

I have a sense there is a large group of "Maddenoliday" type folks out there who just go out and buy each version and just sort of play the game for fun, realism be damned, and, therefore, ignore some of the flaws that ruin the game for the hardercore fans. Is that right?

Edit: Damn youse, Albion! Great minds and all...

That's the interesting part. I think that EA believes that by securing the license, that they will somehow reverse the 10%+ losses in sales that has occured each of the last two years. They seem totally oblivious to the real reason that sales on Madden are dropping. The game's quality just isn't that good and sticking with the same engine with minimal improvements won't change that.

Yes, Madden has seen 10%+ drops in total sales over each of the past two years. NCAA Football suffered a 17% drop in sales this year over the past year.

I know that MBBF pulled the numbers for me a little while ago, but yeah - I remember about what MBBF says.. 10%+ decreases each year since they secured the license originally, if not before that.

This sucks big time. An equal problem is other companies are not creative or ballsy enough to come out with a realistic football game without an NFL license (except for All-Pro).

I love this deal.

Did EA manage to kill the NBA 2k series yet? There's no chance I'll ever buy a new EA sports game again, so I may be on 2k8 for a long long time. I should clarify that I do buy year old used EA games all the time, this year in a moment of weakness I picked up the garbage that was Wii Madden.

The only game I ever buy from them is the NCAA series and it has went from a must buy to wait and see. I refuse to let game spot trick me into making a pre-order I don't mind waiting a week for the game and if need be two weeks.

Fuck EA, EA Sports, EA Games, EA Fans Boys, fuck them as a staff, record label and as a motherfucking crew and if you want to be down with EA then fuck you too! West Side!(In case of some you missed it I am making reference to something Tupac said about bad boy records)

All-Pro Football had good game mechanics, but the decision to pay former players and not have a franchise mode killed the game. Sometimes, these companies outthink themselves and assume they need some sort of pull in the form of name recognition or licenses. Put out a good football game with great gameplay and a good franchise mode and I'd be happy as a clam.

I think having former stars was a good option, but there should have been an option to play with entirely fake players, along with a franchise mode.

Good point. That would have worked as well. The exclusion of the franchise mode was the key mistake.

I'm guessing EA Sports will be paying even more for the extended license?

The NFL is starting to turn me off with it's greed. Talk about a business that is trying to squeeze every penny out of it's customers.

How can you mold a franchise mode when there is a fictitious league with no known rules? I guess they could have thrown something together, but it definitely would have suck potential.

Off topic, but just like every other authoritarian enterprise they will end up screwing themselves in the end.

Make it really customizable. League size, number of games, number of playoff spots. Hell, make playoff series possible. Create cool default fake teams with the option to create your own. Allow users to readily share created teams.

Clearly, Jim should be a consultant! ;)

Wouldn't be that hard. As someone mentioned, customize it (a hard cap or no cap, ect.).

Oh how you forget...There is already one out there! The developer is an amazing man!

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...ad.php?t=45810

The option to turn the beer tent on or off would be awesome as well.

I suspect it's more of a case of them wanting to prevent a drop of 50% in sales as opposed to reversing the 10% drop in sales. If there were a serious competitor to Madden with NFL teams and players the sales of Madden would drop like a rock.

Could be, but that's a lose-lose proposition. When you're a business and your business decisions revolve around ways to minimize sales loss rather than maximize market share, you're not running your business in a profitable manner. This certainly shouldn't come as a surprise to most people regarding EA.

What's EA's bottom line? Are they making money?

They lost $33 million last quarter. Never a good thing when that quarter is where 40% of your yearly sales occur.

Well that's not good.

With the exclusive license they control the market and all that comes with it. They get all the talking heads talking about Madden when it comes out, they get the tv shows like Madden Nation or whatever it's called, they get all the articles written about Madden on release, etc. If they didn't have the exclusive license, I suspect a lot of that stuff would disappear in a year or two.

I think their decision has more to do with controlling the market and all the benefits that come with that. When I said they'd lose 50% instead of 10%, I just pulled the number out of the air but I don't think the decision has so much to do with minimizing that loss in sales as much as maintaining their control of the market. Is it worth it for the cost? I have no idea because there are a lot of factors that you'd have to consider. Do I like it as a consumer? No.

Here's the thing. EA would have made a profit last quarter had they removed that exclusive contract from the books and paid a smaller fee for just the license to get the players/teams/etc. If they then take a portion of that savings and actually hire a few good programmers/developers to bring the game up to a new level, they'd definitely see their sales numbers go up instead of down like they have the past two seasons. They are spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars removing their competitors from the market when the competition isn't even the main problem. The quality of the game is the real problem.

Madden sold more back in the day when it was going against the NFL2k series, or at least in the year NFL2k5 came out (2004?) and that game was available for $20.

The game's declining quality may be affecting sales but the migration of millions of PS2 owners to current-gen systems can't be helping either, considering you can't play normal Madden on the most successful of these.

EA and the NFL both hate gamers unfortunately, oh well I'll just ignore the game or get it used down the road if it's actually good this year.

That was the net income. For example, that included an additional $507 Million in cash they put aside for future use.

Ah ha!

Always nice to have an extra 507 million.

I have an accounting degree. We could pick through financial statements all day long and find exceptions like that to make the bottom line look better/worse than it is.

My accounting teacher had a fine statement concerning accounting..........

"When your boss asks you 'what is 2+2', always ask him 'What would you like it to be?'."

I think the problem starts at the top. John Madden never really struck me as someone that good with computers -- he always seemed a little more old-fashioned, not that into technology. How can he really be expected to oversee effectively every aspect of a complicated game like that?

or

Hey, give the guy a break. In case you guys didn't know, he's doing this game in his spare time. He actually has a real job with NBC, and he just does what he can on the side!

I believe John is the lead tester. That may explain a lot of things.

Boom!

After seeing the recent No Reservations episode about Vancouver, I'm going to guess EA is doing OK. Either that, or they will go down in the most comfortable flames in the history of mankind.

You make a good point. EA has some monsterous facilities. Often that can lead to the conclusions that you state (Oh, we're fine. Just look at this place! We're EA!). There's been software and hardware companies before them that have fallen from just as lofty a perch as EA currently occupies (Oh, we're fine. Just look at this place! We're Atari!).

I think one of them n****s got sickle cell or somethin.

Why the anger at EA for extending the agreement? EA has been able to produce crappy games that continue to sell even if they are selling at a lower rate. That tells me that enough people don't give a crap what kind of pro football game they get as long as it has NFL on the box. Also, as MBBF and others have already said, no company has come out with a realistic pro football game. If and when one company does, we will see whether gamers prefer a quality game or a crappy game with NFL on the box.

Hey, how hard it is it to put in some new features? I mean you just take this thing there and slide it over here, and then boom, new feature. Brett Favre has always been one of the best new features of all time, but then people say "well, how does Brett Favre always know how to put in new features". And it's just that Brett Favre has that one thing that all new features have, and you can't really teach other new features how to be like Brett Favre...

*gunshot*

But who's going to develop a game that is as good as Madden? I think you guys forget how far Madden has come over the years. No, it is not a perfect game (i don't play it anymore), but EA has invested years and years into animations and gameplay variations. Maybe you guys haven't been to the FOF forums for while, but FOF doesn't have a perfect franchise mode either. Clearly something about getting an AI to successfully GM a team over a period of years is challenging.

Well, it's better than Matrix Games and the MF team getting the license.

:D

Disappointing but not surprising.