EA Sports vs. Take-Two
Troy Wolverton of TheStreet.com has written an article describing the uphill battle faced by companies like Take-Two when trying to gain ground in the EA-dominated sports market. Sports comprise more than 19% of video game sales, and EA sports titles make up 62% of that. When Take-Two and Sega teamed up to put out the ESPN 2K line, they forced EA to cut prices, and succeeded in taking momentum away from the larger company's sports domination. However, EA simply followed up by securing exclusivity with the NFL, the NCAA, the AFL, and even ESPN. Take-Two has managed to secure the exclusive rights to make third-party Major League Baseball games, but analyst Michael Goodman believes that baseball games do not sell well enough to build a brand like football can.
"I don't believe baseball, hockey or basketball are popular enough to build a brand around," says Goodman. "They have a fan base, but I don't believe they're big enough to build an entire corporate identity." The loss of the ESPN brand represents a further challenge for Take-Two, forcing the company to essentially begin brand-building from scratch. That's in contrast to EA, which just put out the 16th version of its Madden. ...Take-Two also faces a well-financed competitor. EA is rumored to have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get the exclusive on the NFL game. And if the company feels under threat in the other sports areas, it may well decide to throw money at them as well.Everyone knows that EA is the world's biggest video game publisher and that their sports label is a key brand, but it is nonetheless unnerving to see a publisher able to effectively negate its competition simply by virtue of having enough money to ensure its competition can't even make a certain category of games.
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rosewood
replyWhy not pair up with Fox Sports Net, or CNNSI?
And did I read that correctly? No more EA official MLB titles?-
I'm sure Take-Two will pursue those kinds of deals, but the thing is every time EA buys something out they have to recreate their brand. Madden is in its 16th iteration, people know that name. If Take-Two is switching names all the time because EA is constantly taking their partners away, people are not going to bother keeping track of it.
And yeah, no EA-published MLB titles. I think they could probably develop one and have it published by a first-party publisher like Sony, though, which would still be hard to go up against. I don't know how the branding would work, though.-
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I am so confused on what makes who a 3rd party, first party, etc?
So nintendo, sony and microsoft could do 1st party games because its their console? And who is the first party for the PC world?
I think too much stock is being put into branding when it comes to the other sports games. MADDEN is a brand name. However, none of the other sports have been "Lance Armstrong's Tour de France" or "Joe Buck presents Major League Baseball" or "Wayne Gretzski National Hockey League"
When I bought my baseball game this year, I just said "give me the baseball game ... no no, not the EA one" and Im sure a lot of people will do the same next year. "Hey, is that the official baseball game? Yea! okay bought" I can't see any level of 'branding' making a difference in these sports markets.-
Yeah, Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo could do it. Nintendo is developing Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball, which is an official MLB license, but the game seems to have fallen off the radar and nobody knows what's going on with it.
As far as PC goes, it would have to be Take-Two since they're the only third-party company with the MLB license.
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ea has sports illustrated
its in the game!
yeah athen sports too
its amazing how they thought to snag everything almost, just swallow the price and take out possible compition, im not sure about the deals with si or athen but its quite amazing, i dont know how si would like to be in a game that has espn too though so maybe that wont last long.
