EA borgs the NFL
by Alphaville Herald on 15/12/04 at 11:33 am
EA’s Corporate Headquarters
IGN.com has reported that EA has acquired exclusive rights to the use of NFL players, teams, and stadiums in video games. Bad news for ESPN games I guess. Worse news for gamers! But wait, it gets worse: EA is negotiating similar deals with the NBA and MLB. Now I hate to say I told you so (well, actually I like it) but in my first talk at the State of Play I predicted that this was the future of game companies like EA and SoE — unable to produce quality products from a technical standpoint, they will use their financial and legal clout to secure trademarks and copyrighted content and control the gaming market by holding they keys to that sort of content. I guess it beats trying to make those snotty programmers work 80 weeks without overtime pay.
Urizenus
Dec 15th, 2004
Trailblazer, your post was lost in the blog changeover. Feel free to repost.
Meanwhile, lots of commentary on this issue here.