On this date Exactly 20 years ago on December 15, 2004, EA Ruined Football games forever with their 300 Million dollar exclusivity deal with the NFL
On this date Exactly 20 years ago on December 15, 2004, EA Ruined Football games forever with their 300 Million dollar exclusivity deal with the NFL
after this, Games like NFL 2K, NFL Gameday, NFL Fever, NFL QB club and NFL Blitz could no longer exist, only Madden.
A quote form on Old Forum website when this news broke 20 years ago:
"5 more years of Glorified Roster Updates
EA is the biggest cancer to the Industry, they put out mediocre games and nobody says anything bad about them because they have the reviewers paid off
not to mention the numerous ways they find to spit in the face of people who buy form them"
It's pretty damn accurate, even 20 years later . both EA and their games have gotten worse over the last 20 years
It's also worth remembering that EA did this because they freaked out over Sega making a better game that they were selling cheaper than Madden.
Where are the capitalists screeching about the free market?
I remember that shit. Honestly, madden 2005 and NFL 2K5 were both fire football games and it was a pretty close split over arguing which was better at the time. EA and the NFL went pretty hard on sucking cock with going exclusive. Really trashed making anything creative or new from that point on.
Honestly the NCAA football games from 05 (2004 on) onwards have always been much more interesting football games over madden. 2K5 is a really good nfl game, but I honestly rather dick around in the NCAA football's dynasty mode than 2k5's franchise mode.
NFL Blitz was the shit.
for real, I forgot all about that game. I had it for N64 and it was such a fun pick up and play type of deal.
Totally! I had no idea that it was EA's fault that it disappeared. I picked it up for every system I ever had. I think Dreamcast was the last one for me.
NFL Blitz was soooo good
One thing I hate about sports games is they don't design based on real world stats nor create a huge library of players and teams. For example, a game character's speed is determined by the average number of yards a player ran per play in real life. Or their accuracy in catching the ball. Toss in a good physics engine that calculates their mass ramming into a player with less mass to determine how a tackle plays out.
Do this for every player every year and you have a really cool fantasy football (or whatever sport) sim. Make a stacked team from the best players of that year to dominate a season. Make a roster from the worst players and try to win by having better plays. Even better? You can mix and match players from different years or eras. Have Michael Jordan and Shaq on your 2013 Lakers team. Play Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Don Hutson in the Chicago Bears.
Like how cool would that shit be?
Football Manager is probably the closest we'll ever get to something like that.
Wouldn't that make the goalkeeper unreasonably slow?
John Madden