I love Electronic Arts games, but I hate the way the company does business. The gaming giant managed to finagle an exclusive licensing agreement with the NFL, essentially cutting all other companies out of the football market for the next five years. The agreement comes after the company lost a chunk of their market to Take-Two s low-priced, high-end ESPN football franchise.

Things were looking good for the consumer a few months ago with EA cutting the price of their sports titles in an effort to stem the flow of cash to ESPN. Then the Take-Two folks announced that next year their ESPN franchise was going full-price again. Now this.

This latest development reminds me of the still unexplained motives behind both Microsoft and Sony getting out of the online sports business at essentially the same time.

Shortly after Microsoft announced shutting down their sports franchise, EA agreed to make all of their games live.
I smell a conspiracy. If any of you underpaid, overworked EA employees want to anonymously hip me to the truth, I ll be happy to share.

All Madden, All the time [ESPN]

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