EA Signs deal with ESPN
The loss of ESPN is a significant blow to Take Two, which had been hoping to diversify its product line with sports games. While its relationship with Sega and Visual Concepts still stands, the companies no longer have a well-known hook with which to attract customers.
The companies have not announced specific plans for the sports market since the EA-NFL announcement, but Probst said he thinks it's unwise to assume EA will not have competition in some form.
"I think there's plenty of room for competition," said Probst. "At the end of the day its who can build the highest quality products. There's plenty of room for other third party companies - and console first-party companies - to do that. Just because EA Sports and ESPN are partnering I don't think people are going to run for the hills and not compete with us."
EA grabs exclusive rights to NFL
EA games recently struck a deal with the NFL, granting the game publisher exclusive rights to all NFL team and player names for five years. The deal has generated a lot of negative publicity for EA, which has been accused of stifling healthy compitition with Sega's ESPN football franchise. The exact amount shelled out for the NFL rights is unknown, but its estimated as somewhere between 200-300 million.
EA locking down even more
EA recently purchased 19.9 percent of Ubisoft's stock, effectively giving the company part ownership of the rival game publisher. Ubisoft responded with a statement calling the move hostile, saying that EA was attempting to take over key games studios.
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