EA Sports used to be one of my favorite video game developers. With hits like Madden, NBA Live, Tiger Woods, FIFA, and Fight Night. The EA company hit it's peak during the PS2/Xbox generation acquiring exclusive licensing for the NFL, NCAA, and ESPN all but guaranteeing the company sports supremacy for years to come. In 2006, EA Sports gave us a peek into the future of sports gaming with target renders for Madden and NBA Live. Since then EA Sports has become the bane of my sports gaming existence.
EA Sports has become a company of glamorous promises and broken dreams. The copy and paste development style never truly innovates. The entire next generation 2006 line up was broken, with the PS2/Xbox versions delivering better game play and almost equal features as their counterparts. Fight Night Rd 3 was EA Sports saving grace. 2007 brought another Madden disgrace, No NBA Live, No Fight Night and FIFA and NHL started to become the top sports franchises for the company.
Sports and competition go hand in hand. Well why would a sports Dev. add Madden IQ to help lesser skilled people compete? The casual movement has started in the game industry, but every game cant be for everybody especially sports simulation games. In the new Fight Night Rd.4, the game play problems are everywhere from fighters being stuck together at the knees to regular punches not being effective at all. NBA Live hasn't had a learning curve since its next gen debut, not to mention the game's countless glitches.
Then there are the business practices being pulled by EA. The acquisition of ESPN and the NFL is the holy grail of sports. Most sports gamers to this day consider NFL 2k5 as the definitive NFL Sim. Back then I was a hardcore Madden Fan, in retrospect NFL2k5 had Chris Berman, Sportscenter, On-line Franchise and a Sportscenter halftime show which in the franchise shows highlights of games being played around the league. All of which I figured would be put on Madden once the deals went through. Now present day the NFL and ESPN licenses are severely underused. It's seems as if the licenses were only acquired to keep them away from the competition not to better their own franchises. Madden 2010 is just now reaching the presentation level of NFL 2k5 and we have yet to see them perfect a simple running motion which is embarrassing.
In 2009 its painful to see EA Sports franchises sell well. No competitors in most sports genres leave gamers running to EA sports to get their NFL, NCAA, boxing, and golf games. Games like Backbreaker, NBA2k, PES, and NHL09 shows us you need to compete to thrive. The other choice is to become complacent and let legendary titles become mediocre. Unfortunatly due to their name recognition and the exclusivity deals people will continue to buy EA Sports titles. Until they get competition everyone will coneinue to see the lack of innovation in sports titles.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Good read. i really don't like sports games cause there all the same
with better graphics. The only good EASports series i like is FightNight