EA Sports fall from grace

Originally when I got back into gaming as an adult, the Dreamcast was the console I had been playing.

The NFL 2k Football games totally blew my mind. I am a huge football fan and I thought they were super realistic compared to the Montana Sports talk Football of my earlier days of gaming. I guess I was never a "Madden Football" fan.

I always preferred another NFL game to Madden.

When ESPN NFL 2k5 came out I was in Sim Football heaven! The animations looked real, unlike Maddens (Gears of War type Animations) There was gang tackles, you could control the defense like never before, you could double cover the wide receivers, the playbooks were authentic. There was a trophy section called "The Crib" where you unlocked items from your favorite teams to put around your crib.

There were celebrity people to play against like Steve-O from Jackass and Carmen Electra. Where the Computer simulated what the celebrities did when they actually played the game themselves. This was also a feature online, you could download the top players "Profile" and play against it, even when they weren't there, and it would copy all the things they would do. That way you could practice against them.

There were online leagues, I won mine. There were online ranking systems, I was in the top 10.

The running game actually worked in this game. THere was even the unique First person Football mode. Which was fun to mess around with.

Best of all 2K sports realized what a total rip off it is to sell a new sports game eact year for a full $50 or $60 when most games just give you an updated roster.

So there solution was to charge $19.99 for all there sports titles. Due to this, I was able to buy ESPN 2k5 Football on Playstation 2 and XBox and I also was able to buy 2k5 Baseball.

The folks over at EA Didn't like this very much, they were outclassed and outsold by ESPN NFL 2K5, so what did they do? They purchased the very expensive exclusive NFL license.

So now Madden is the only game that can have actual NFL players and and stadiums and things like that. My big concern is that with no competition EA doesn't have to improve the product. People will buy it because it is the only game in town. They aren't forced to get better.

I have not bought an NFL game since then and I cant wait until the license runs out. I think it is a mistake to let any one developer have rights to something like the NFL or MLB or anything like that.

Now what can we do? Well I have done the class action thing, I've signed the petitions and now I guess we just have to wait for the Exclusive deal to fade away. It should have never happened to begin with honestly.

I am happy to see EA fail again and again, I love the fact that less and less people are buying Madden each year. You reap what you sew EA.