Football Video Games in the Future

If you play football video games, this announcement will impact your gaming in the not too distant future:

Video game publisher Electronic Arts on Monday said it had signed an exclusive agreement with the National Football League and the marketing arm of its players' union, giving EA the sole rights to put NFL players, stadiums and teams in its games.

The exclusive license struck a blow for EA in its ongoing battle with the joint venture of Sega Sammy Holdings and Take-Two Interactive Software.

Take-Two is the maker of the ESPN-branded games, like this years NFL 2K5 featuring Terrell Owens on the box. While EA's Madden NFL series has long been the market leader, the ESPN game this year made significant market gains by slashing prices to less than half of what Madden cost. This deal means that future versions of the ESPN game, as well as any other competing product still in production, will not be able to use real player names and faces, nor will they be able to use team names and logos, which will effectively crush those products.