Electronic Arts, ESPN ink exclusive 15-year deal

[3RA1N1AC]

well. this may just be speculation, but i imagine that europe & australia get a lower priority 'cause they don't buy nearly as much as japanese & americans do. money talks. that, and they have a different television format which adds time to the conversion process since the games are all originally designed for jpn/usa TVs.

[Adster]

possibly the dumbest statement i've read today. sega are an awesome game company. who gives a crap about when aussies get their games? try buying your pop-culture product in comparable quantities to what we do, then they'll place a higher priority on timely game/movie/music/etc releases for australia.

back on topic: EA IS THE DEATH OF CREATIVITY. okay.

and thats the most fucking ignorant thing Ive read today

there are 1000s of other games that US and japsn don't get that PAL gamers do

oh btw madden is teh highest selling game in Australia each yeah so don't give me that shit that Australia don't like US Football

[3RA1N1AC]

Have You Tried Imports And Piracy

[Adster]

imports uselss NTSC will not play on PAL consoles

and as for piracy yeah need to be modded ffs

[3RA1N1AC]

from a different forum:

Report from Europe
The few games that are actually released over here are hideously overpriced and obnoxiously underfeatured. Oh and they're released a year late because the French, Spanish and German dudes refuse to learn English. Present company excluded of course. Anyone who has a non-trivial interest in games has been modding their systems since the SNES days.
End report.

could this be the answer!

[Busyman]

I almost positive the reason ESPN inked an exclusive deal was because EA now has an exclusive contract with the NFL.

The football wars are over.

This is very horrible for competition. It's bad enough that each new Madden that came out offered just an updated roster and stats and very little new innovation. Every year folks ante up their $50 "subscription fee" for a paltry, scant raising of the bar.

Now EA, which has paid millions, has ESPN and NFL licenses for a considerable amount of time. I wonder how much money they have left to "raise the bar".
Better yet, how much effort would they even need to put forth in earning the consumers money now that they hold or basically took the cards away from the other players?

[3RA1N1AC]

well. okay. a lot of people buy sports games because they want the simulation aspect, right? the real league teams and fields and rosters and coaches, etc. they wanna get that "wow, it feels like i'm really managing the Pistons!" feeling or whatever. but maybe there's room for something else? maybe it's possible to do good sports games, even more creative and fun sports games, without all of that "officially licensed" baloney.

maybe it's TIME for something new, to add a breath of fresh air to the sports genre. remember Mutant League Football? back in 1993, EA actually released a game with frickin' SKELETONS AND OGRES PLAYING FOOTBALL. or those baseball & football games with ROBOTS? i think if somebody were to do games like that now, and make 'em well-designed of course, it could totally be a successful niche for people who are getting bored with realistic sports sims, and for people who normally wouldn't buy sports games. how about a sports game where steroid abuse and beating up the other team's coach is ENCOURAGED AND REWARDED?... you can't do THAT in an officially licensed game. smaller developers need to come up with some wild ideas that EA just isn't offering anymore, if they want to hold onto a slice of the market. EA keeps placing easy, sure bets nowadays: "everybody wants to buy a fully licensed sports game with players from real leagues." but you never know what kind of weird stuff people will buy unless you take a risk and put out something creative and different.