News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
• QuickHit Football had a solid debut year in 2009 and won an NFL license a year later. Then it lost its director of design, a veteran of the beloved NFL 2K5, and was bought up by Majesco around E3 last year. Now it's losing the NFL license that seems to be the holy grail of sports gaming.
QuickHit quietly announced on its Facebook page that as of June 1, players' teams with NFL insignia would no longer carry those brands. Anyone who customized a team with the colors and logos of an existing NFL team will get a placeholder logo and colors.
The game, from its birth, had gotten five real-world players to appear in it, per the limitations of the NFL Players Association's group license. These agreements will be unaffected. But the loss of the league branding simply reeks like a cost-saving move on the part of the new owners. [Pasta Padre]
• If you head to a game at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park, chances are you'll catch a new public service announcement about video game ratings, starring the Giants' Buster Posey and Ryan Vogelsong. (That's a making-of video at left). The PSA will also run in television markets and on radio stations throughout northern California. Maybe it's not Willie Mays telling kids not to pick up construction site explosives, but hey, it'll do.
• Andrew Wilson, the man in charge at EA Sports, was recently named No. 40 on Fast Company's ranking of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for the year. Wilson did a little better in the Kotaku Power 40 rankings of influential members of the video games industry, coming in at No. 30.