How did the whole 2k vs EA market war happen?

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by tril

With that said the thing that separates the older gen EA football games and the older 2k games is that the basic principles of football are upheld.

This x10

Early during the "market war", EA seemed to put more effort into shutting out 2K than making smart development decisions, and it's affected Madden to this day. I still see remnants in the game of the Shaun Alexander release disaster - think it was the next gen release at the time. The hump backed player models, lack of player individuality, odd animation blending, etc. is still visible to me. But because so many people have no idea what came before it multiple console generations earlier, it's accepted.

I guess to that degree EA's strategy worked

[marleyk]

2k did football better

football - 2k sports
soccer - pes
bball - nba live
hockey - ?

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by spankdatazz22

Early during the "market war", EA seemed to put more effort into shutting out 2K than making smart development decisions, and it's affected Madden to this day.

Two of the most popular and enduring gameplay features in the Madden NFL series - Playmaker and the Hit Stick - were introduced into the game during this “market war”, in Madden 2004 and Madden 2005 respectively. To that extent that many people enjoyed it, Owner Mode also first appeared in Madden 2004.

Maybe 2K people didn’t like the strong user-focused direction the Madden games took during this time (especially with Playmaker, there’s a reason Madden 2004 Michael Vick is still a video game legend), but to say Tiburon was resting on their laurels during this time is painting an inaccurate picture.

The transition from Gen-3 to Gen-4 consoles was indeed a debacle, but that happened independent of any licensing discussions, and was heavily detailed in that old Rolling Stone article.

[spankdatazz22]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Maybe 2K people didn’t like the strong user-focused direction the Madden games took during this time (especially with Playmaker, there’s a reason Madden 2004 Michael Vick is still a video game legend), but to say Tiburon was resting on their laurels during this time is painting an inaccurate picture.

So you're saying they rested on their laurels after they got exclusivity lol? Not sure why you're nitpicking my statements; it's undeniable Madden got much worse post-exclusivity. But I'd argue you're painting an inaccurate picture trying to portray Tiburon as firing on all cylinders back then, when in fact the game had started to become stale.

Yes, Tiburon introduced features people liked as you said. But they also had a habit of introducing features year over year that would completely unbalance the game - Michael Vick and over the top offense in 2004, Ray Lewis and ridiculous over the top defense in 05 (I think).

Seems you're trying to pigeon-hole me as a 2K-only fan when that's not the case. For many of us older gamers, Madden was our first love. It was the first game to bring the simulation football we craved. I have fond memories of Friday nights with groups of friends playing Madden on multiple tvs talking trash. I remember when they had a Create-a-Play feature that let you do practically anything you could think of within the rules. Some of us would carry notebooks to work drawing up plays to use against each other. And it's not like we were kids, we were grown men with jobs (and girlfriends or wives) doing this.

So yeah: When EA and Tiburon saw what 2K was bringing, their actions showed they wanted no parts of it. It's undeniable EA did everything in their power to keep 2K from making a legitimate football game.

[J_Posse]

Quote: Originally Posted by marleyk

2k did football better football - 2k sports soccer - pes bball - nba live hockey - ?

Not going to get too off-topic, but NBA Live has never been a better "true simulation" than the NBA 2K series.

Anyone that says so has on roses - colored glasses about the gameplay style (they leaned heavily on the "arcadey - sim" side) of the past games.

Anyway, this is an interesting discussion being brought back up and I'm hoping whatever 2K/VC cooks up will be worth the wait.

As we see throughout many forms of media & entertainment long wait times between projects are usually a miss. Hopefully that doesn't befall the new 2K football title, it can carve a niché and find some commercial success.

Clearly at the time EA felt like the NFL 2K series had the potential to eat into their marketshare, so they took the most ruthless path to eliminating that chance.

Sucked back then and still sucks today, TBH. And it led to the domino effect of gamers having only one option for each major US sport today, too.

Official HQ of Bills Backer/Spurs Nation

[PVarck31]

Just to show the NFL is still is in the practice of exclusive licensing, Panini, the company that produces their sports trading cards will lose their exclusive license to do so in a few years, as the NFL and Players Association has signed an exclusive deal with Fanatics to produce their cards. Fanatics also got the exclusive license to produce MLB and NBA cards. This will end over 70 years of Topps producing baseball cards. As a sports card enthusiast, this is sad for me.

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by spankdatazz22

Not sure why you're nitpicking my statements; it's undeniable Madden got much worse post-exclusivity. But I'd argue you're painting an inaccurate picture trying to portray Tiburon as firing on all cylinders back then, when in fact the game had started to become stale.

Nah, Tiburon certainly was not firing on all cylinders at the time of the execution of the agreement, we are on the same page there.

As I mentioned in my post, there was an entire Rolling Stone exposé (preserved here by Internet Archive) about how troubled the development of Madden NFL 06 on the XBOX 360 was. That game for a few years drove the series into a ditch; the 06, 07, and 08 versions of Madden on contemporary hardware were train wrecks falling out from the ill-fated XBOX 360 launch title. It took until about Madden 10 for Tiburon to produce a Madden game worth playing again IMO (speaking to the versions of the game which released on the latest hardware).

[sheredia]

Quote: Originally Posted by zello144

The NFL loves exclusive deals unfortunately. Look at the deals they've made with other companies "Exclusive partner of the NFL" with pizza companies and so on It's dumb imo they always do something dumb. Like Sunday Ticket only being exclusively available on Directv until 2022. The owners don't care as long as Madden keeps on printing money for them. I also don't think there's anybody in the league office that cares about video games. Unfortunately the MLB kinda got dragged into this too when 2K after losing the NFL license made an exclusive deal with MLB for MLB 2K and kicked EA out of making baseball games. So we got stuck with MLB 2K and The show was a Sony exclusive for a very long period of time so when MLB 2K got canned way back in 2013 Xbox users were screwed up until this year. I think the primary reason why the Show made it to Xbox was because the MLB didn't like the situation it was in by having their only licensed video game a console exclusive so when they renewed their deal they forced Sony to make it multiplat. EA is in a different situation and the NFL don't care. Sports leagues should just go the NBA route and just open up the license to as many companies as possible as long as you can afford to keep developing the game and can make a profit. Because of that NBA Live has been cancelled many times but it forced EA to keep on trying and reinvent itself though right now it's in limbo. Unfortunately I don't think the NFL likes that model.

exactly......almost seems like the NFL is just happy with exclusive deals and not quality anymore. instead of giving the exclusive license to the better game, they give it to the one with deeper pockets. MLB FINALLY wised up and had the show moved to xbox knowing the show is a high quality game. still can't believe the NFL signs off on this game every year and not demand better quality. they do on everything else their logo is on.