NFL renews exclusive deal with EA, ensuring 6 more years of disappointing Madden games
Aux Features Games
Competition is good in any industry, but it’s rarely as tactile as it is in video games. One game studio popularizes a revolutionary new kind of multiplayer genre, a much bigger game studio comes along and uses its huge amount of resources to build a similar game that it can sell on a free-to-play model that is immensely profitable. Other game studios see this success and try to put their own unique spins on this new genre, all of which are eventually swallowed up by that big game studio to make its game even better. It’s the circle of life, but built in such a way that lions eat gazelles because they’re bigger and because they can afford to steal stripes and super-speed from competing big cats… and also the gazelles really appreciate how much sharper and more high-def the lions get from year to year.
The problem is that there are some lions who have an exclusive licensing deal with a huge professional sports organization, limiting the gazelles to either that lion or no lion. This metaphor is starting to fall apart, so let’s just get to it: According to Variety, the National Football League has renewed its exclusive licensing deal with Electronic Arts, the video game studio that publishes the Madden series, through 2026. That means, for at least six more years, EA’s Madden will be the one and only place where you can get a realistic “simulation”-style football game with the actual NFL players and teams. No other lions get a taste, as has been the case since EA first made this deal in 2004.
This renewal comes as the Madden series has faced decades or so of criticism for—as some fans see it—cashing in on the license and banking on the knowledge that football fans will continue to buy the game every year whether it’s good or not, simply because it’s the football game. With no other companies able to make their own competing football game (one without the NFL license is only going to go so far, as other studios have realized in the past), and fans continuing to buy it because they have very little choice, critics have pointed out that EA has little incentive to actually try and make Madden better in ways that go beyond minor polishing tweaks or roster updates. That being said, video games are hard to make, especially when there has to be a new Madden every single year, so everybody is a little worse off because of this deal… except for whoever’s getting the money at EA and the NFL. They’re doing great.
23 Comments
I’m a Browns fan. That’s an awful low bar for designating “a football man.”
As a Steelers fan, I concur. The Browns themselves are indeed “an awful low bar for designating ‘a football man.’”
See also: every single fucking EA game. It’s all about packs and profits, with the gameplay not even a distant second.EA: It’s in the Gamembling
NFL 2K on Dreamcast changed football videogames for me. It was so much better than Madden at the time it wasn’t even funny. And I preferred the 2K NFL games until EA got the exclusive license. Now, even if 2K were able to make an NFL game, it would be a microtransaction nightmare, just like Madden. Between microtransactions and a yearly release that is mostly just a $60 roster update have made sports games disappear from my video game life.
Tecmo Bowl forever!!!
One of the only times I had an actual fight with my middle brother was when I wanted to play Castlevania and he was in the middle of Tecmo Bowl. In retrospect, he was right: I did play a lot of Castlevania, and it was stupid to always play the first few levels and then start over.
Fuck that game. I made it to the grim reaper which was just insanely and nonsensically hard and had to stop for my own health. And this is coming from someone who beat Battletoads and Punch-out.
I left a game of Castlevania on pause for like two days so I wouldn’t have to start over.
Tecmo Super Bowl > Tecmo Bowl
The best Madden game was ‘92 on the Genesis where the ambulance would come onto the field and run over any players in the way. Good times.
I can practically hear the sounds from that game as I watch that gif.
I never played this version. That is, uh, a weird touch.
The real crime is not bringing back this bitchin theme
Does anybody actually like Madden as a personality? He’s never really come across as anything but an asshole to me.
Frank Caliendo’s impressions of him always make me laugh, and while I kind of enjoy the idea of a clearly insane person being allowed to ramble nonsensically on mainstream sports television every week, nah, I don’t really give a shit about him.
The fact that he was super-offended by that impression, to the point of being really angry over the very idea of somebody laughing at him, was a big part of my concluding that he was just an asshole. In a lot of ways, Caliendo’s impression was pretty standard, and was no more mean (was actually substantially less so than a lot of celebrity impressions) than anything anybody else famous cheerfully puts up with. That kind of knee-jerk offended rejection of the very idea of being laughed at is part of my very definition of “horrible asshole.”
I had no idea about any of that, but yeah, I can’t say I disagree. You’re a public figure, and a hugely famous one at that. Deal with it.
It’s funny because it’s not that much of an exaggeration of the basic stuff Madden actually says.
Growing up in an Asian household where game consoles were not allowed, the NFL games of my childhood were all PC based. There was NFL Challenge in the 80s, where you could only call plays, and you literally watched Xs and Os go across the field:In the 90s, Front Page Sports Football was my game:I played Madden ‘93 against a friend on his Sega Genesis. But I didn’t own a Madden game until 2003, and really missed the depth of the old games.
The last time they made a complete NFL football game. Fourteen fucking years ago. Just look at the features in that game. Single season play with updated rosters, excellent franchise mode, and great gameplay for the time. Not coincidently it was the pinnacle of it’s competition with 2K and after the exclusive contract with the NFL. I haven’t touched Madden in five years and it looks like I won’t be for many more.
Its not coincidental. Its a direct bi-product of the competition. Sports games have never been better than when EA, 2K and Microsoft were all battling for sports game supremacy. NBA Inside Drive made one of my favorite sports video games ever, and that series ended in 2004. Now 2K is so far ahead of the curve, its just basically them and Madden completely owning their sports.
I’m not a sports or a sports game person at all, but I’ll play Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 Masters Collectors Edition on PS3 all day long. I love the courses, the gameplay, the look of it, the player customization tools, the wacky commentary by Jim Nantz and David Feherty, all of it. Give me a rainy weekend and a case of hard ciders, and I’ll have that green jacket by Sunday morning. I don’t think there’s been a quality golf game since.I believe it’s this version that includes a few remastered courses from an earlier version, one of which is a crazy jungle course with lots of weird obstacles like a Mayan temple or something in the middle of the fairway. It’s a tough course, but it offers the chance to go for some truly weird shots. It’s a ton of fun.
Other than throwing money at everyone, why does EA always get these deals? They get a lot of bad press on the crap they are putting out and you would think the rights holders – NFL here – would want to avoid that. Try someone new once and see what they have to offer. EA will always be ready to step back in to offer another dose of mediocrity.