On Tuesday afternoon, a close friend sent me a link directing me to ESPN with an article about EA sports cornering the videogame market with an exclusive deal with the NFL. My thoughts on the deal at first was of shock, but as my day went on I began to ponder how much impact this deal will have overall. This thought was not just from a videogame perspective, but how it will affect the players, fans and those who have been involved with these popular games over the years.

Sport games have been a major staple for the video game industry, and in order to have a successful gaming console you have to have a successful sports title, and over the years that title had been the Madden series put out by EA Sports, and Tiburon programming.

For those who can remember, the 8-bit Nintendo system, 10 Yard Fight was all the rage until Tecmo Bowl hit the scene. Tecmo ran the table until the 16 bit systems hit the market. That is when the EA Madden series jumped from the PC onto gaming consoles like the Sega Genesis. The Madden series exploded, and took the football title year after year reaping accolades from the sporting world and media.

It wasn't until the Sega Dreamcast hit the scene with its NFL 2K series that people and critics began to talk. The developers at Tiburon/EA Sports weren't all that worried because Sony's PS1 was dominating households, and almost every one of those households owned a copy of Madden every year. It wasn't until the Sega Dreamcast went online and brought the newest 2K with them. The buzz was huge, and the online play was a success over the 56k. The Madden series felt a singe but continued to put out a sub par product with minor upgrades to game play and the graphics sticking with the "if it ain't broke" motto. EA knew they had faithful buyers and didn't give them anything in return as this writer-jumped ship when the first Sega 2K hit the market.

With the Dreamcast fading from existence the PS2 hit homes with a vengeance, and EA decided to rest on it's laurels by taking a year off, and proved costly when the XBox rolled in. The XBox came with a horrible Microsoft game NFL Fever, and since Sega removed themselves from the console wars they were able to concentrate on only software. Sega unleashed the 2K series on the XBox and wiped out the competition. It's was such a domination with the addition of successful online play that ESPN dropped it's own line of games and signed on with Sega/Visual Concepts in a last minute deal before the 2004 season began. The move was a huge success and gave Sega what they needed to take on EA.

This year the ESPN series dropped the hammer on EA early by offering a better game for cheaper money, a game that also allowed the user to do much more especially with the XBox version. EA's Madden had no "wow" additions to their game this year, and graphically the game lacked since EA catered its graphics to the lesser-powered PS2. Those who purchased Madden on XBox were robbed, and soon some of those people were going back and trading their copies of Madden in for ESPN.

EA felt the heat, and began to offer several deals to move Madden of the shelves, by November they gave in and dropped the price of Madden to compete with ESPN who was now selling all of its sports titles for $19.99. EA has now responded with this deal that NFL Players Union Director Gene Upshaw claimed was being talked about months before ESPN hit the shelves earlier this year. This statement from Upshaw would be a serious contradiction since back on May 3 of this year The Sports Business Journal and ESPN Magazine had broke a report that EA was set to pay Players Inc.1 billion dollars for exclusive rights coming out to 250 million a year for 4 years. Gamespot News on May 18th reported that a moderator for the ESPN Videogames.com contacted the NFLPA, and they denied the deal. The NFLPA also went as far as accusing the story as being false and forced the Sports Business Journal to run a retraction article. EA Sports contacted Gamespot News, and had them confirm the retraction.

Now here we are seven months later, and the deal is real. So real that it's all over the Internet, ESPN and all of the stock reports since EA's stock took a big jump after the announcement and ESPN reported this quote from Gene Upshaw.

"This exclusive relationship will maximize the value of NFL players through EA's continued commitment to bring fans closer to the game,"

What could the NFL and NFLPA be thinking with a five year deal with a videogame company?

I understood it when they signed an exclusive deal with Reebok, and got rid of some of the smaller entities that held licensing rights, but this move will only hold consumers hostage to a "one game-one price" mentality. EA will be able to charge whatever it wants knowing the consumer that has supported them over the years will continue to and those who didn't will be forced to since it will be the only game with actual players, uniforms and stadiums.

This deal to me is bad news, and I wonder how some of the players feel since some supported the ESPN series like two time Super Bowl MVP QB Tom Brady. Tom performed QB digital motion capture work for the ESPN series two years in a row as did other players like Brian Urlacher, JJ Stokes, Tim Rattay, Tyrone Wheatley, and Ahman Green. With one game on the market that's only one extra paycheck compared to what players were getting from games like NFL Fever (Microsoft), NFL Blitz (Midway), NFL Gameday (989 Sports), and the successful NFL Backyard series for kids on the PC combined.

This is a marketing coup and already there is an online petition with over 5,000 signatures that when completed will be sent to the NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue expressing the thoughts of consumers who feel they have just been burned in a deal that only favors EA and no-one else.

EA, which is called the "evil empire" in some circles is rolling in glory now that they have three exclusive deals. For over a year they have had NASCAR and PGA in their pockets, and this year they jumped on board for XBox Live when they realized it's online subscriptions topped the one million mark. This was something Sony wasn't even close to accomplishing on the PS2.

With 2005 approaching Sony and Microsoft are planning on releasing their next-gen consoles, and if EA is still holding on to the rights they will rake in money from both consoles and consumers won't have any right to choose.

Comments? Hit me up: Sinista1@msn.com