How would EA respond? By pulling the equivalent of a school boy taking his ball and going home. They signed an exclusive deal with the NFL giving them the only company with the right to make NFL games for five years (before renewing that contract for another five years a couple of years later).
They also signed a deal becoming the only company licensed to make college football games. So really, not only did EA take the ball and go home, they rolled up the playing surface and tore down the goals.
2K sports soon struck back in a relatively small way, inking a deal to become the only third-party game producer for Major League Baseball. What exactly does that mean? It means that if you own an X-Box 360 and want a MLB video game, your only choice is the MLB 2K series.
In turn, EA acquired the exclusive rights to produce a licensed college basketball game. This led me to consider buying up every copy of College Hoops 2K8 I can find and store them in a safe deposit box in case something happens to mine. I would rather tear my own thumbs off than play EA’s March Madness series.
Kudos to David Stern, who nixed any efforts by any game developer to acquire exclusive rights to make NBA games.
Kudos also to Gary Bettman, who has screwed up his NHL league so bad that nobody really cares who makes those games.
The sports video gaming industry has also thus far avoided collapse upon itself, as EA has thus far been unable to broker a deal to buy Take Two, the parent company of 2K games.
This article is not intended to espouse the virtues of one company over another. Both 2K and EA have their merits. 2K is widely considered to be the better developer of basketball games. EA has the edge in hockey games; and, until the exclusivity deal, was recognized as the leader in baseball games.
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