Topic: Anti-trust suit against EA over NFL exclusivity gets go-ahead

[Cobra951]

A federal-district court judge denied EA's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging that the Madden series violates antitrust-laws.  The judge basically agreed that without the official names, football videogames cannot compete.  Could it be?  Might we actually see a return to proper anti-trust enforcement?  Seems too good to be true after all the momentum the big corporations have gained in the wrong direction.  I talked in another thread about how the DoJ is supposed to be moving toward more such enforcement as well.  But this is a civil lawsuit, not government intervention.  Any such trend is welcome.

[wizall]

This is terrific news.

[scottws]

Yeah, this was a travesty since I thought the 2K Sports NFL games were better.  They weren't as fleshed out in terms of a career mode, but the gameplay itself I felt was superior.

[idolminds]

The only sports games I really liked were the 2k series I bought for Dreamcast. Had so much fun playing with my brother. I always thought EA buying up the exclusive rights to a bunch of sports was bullshit.

[Quemaqua]

Absolutely.  I am by no means a sports gamer, but I actually really enjoyed the 2k games on Dreamcast as well, and in theory could have seen myself heading more down that road with a little encouragement.  But I never liked any of EA's sports titles, so the momentum died there.  Honestly, I don't know what it is, but all of their sports games that I've tried I've not liked much, regardless of type of sport.  I really couldn't point to a reason since I don't play games of that kind a lot, but there's just... something.  In particular I thought the Winning Eleven series was tremendously heads and tails above FIFA.

[MysterD]

I always thought EA buying up the exclusive rights to a bunch of sports was bullshit.

I think it waters everything down b/c there's really no competition for EA -- so, they might not push games features for each iteration to the limits b/c they have their own pace that they can work with. So, the drive to have the best NFL might not be there b/c...they're the only game in town.

I think it was better with multiple competitors pumping out NFL games, as well.

[gpw11]

Sega's 2k sports games were generally a lot better than EA's offerings.  NFL 2Kx spanked Madden as far as I'm concerned in every category but polish and NHL 2k had beter AI and was a better simulation (although somewhat less playable, especially in multiplayer with newcomers).  The NFL exclusivity agreement kind of killed off all of EA's competition before they had a time to really streamline their products and while I don't know if this is going to open the flood gates per say, it's still a good thing.