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Okay, I'm gonna do the un-thinkable. I'm gonna talk baseball. I know- I know, I'm not a big , huge fan of MLB Baseball- and I think sooner or later it will have the same fate as the NHL because of poor management.
(You know... the obvious logic of "Geez guys, dontcha think we should pattern ourselves after the NFL with the cap and revenue sharing... that these jokers who run the league DONT SEEM TO GRASP!)
Okay... I'm off my soap-box now. (clears throat....)
What I'm talking about is video baseball, and the big deals that happened this week. Take Two interactive nabbed up both Visual Concepts AND the MLB 3rd party license within a few short hours of each other. The Visual Concepts move was obvious, and is a logical move, especially considering it was always seemed to be treated like the unwanted child of its parent (Sega) who's product marketing was -dare I say- nonexistent for many years of the NFL 2K series product. I have a feeling Visual Concepts is probably darn glad to be out from under the thumb of the Sega of Japan corporate machine. As for Take Two's scooping of the MLB Players Association 3rd party license exclusivity- here's how it translates.
1. The console-makers, Nintendo-Sony-XBOX, can still make their own licensed MLB first party games. They aren't nudged out at all. We'll still see Sony's baseball series, as well as any Nintendo/Microsoft baseball game (if they opt to make them) on their respective systems. These can have an MLB/MLBPA license.
2. HOWEVER- Take Two has EXCLUSIVE rights to be the only maker of MLB/MLBPA games in a 3rd party capacity. That just knocked out EA's MVP Baseball line after this coming year (the deal starts in 2006).
Well, many of the web publications are applauding this deal as "Take Two strikes back at EA" or they echo similar sentiment. Sorry folks, but I don't buy that one minute. I'm of the opinion that this deal is WORSE for gamers than the EA/NFL exclusivity deal was. Of course, many of you are saying "Is Quietcool72 off his rocker? This deal PALES in comparison!"
But lets look further...
At least with EA's deal, any owner of any system- be it GameCube, PS2, PS3, XBOX, XBOX2, and PC- can buy a licensed NFL football game. Madden (or whatever EA's football calls itself in the future) is available for everyone. However, the wording of the Take Two/MLB deal is such that EA- as a 3rd party- is blocked from using the MLB license.
But does anybody realize that EVERY game-maker who makes a PC game is actually a 3rd party!! So the PC people who could care less about hardball on the consoles may have just got screwed big-time by both the MLBPA and Take Two. T2 would have exclusive rights to PC distribution of licensed MLB games- but as of this date in history, Visual Concepts has yet to port any of its console games to PC.
Translation- If Take-Two and their new "2K Sports" label does not port its MLB game to PC, this deal did nothing but hurt PC hardballers! At least with EA's NFL deal, everybody at least had an NFL licensed game made for their system. As it stands now, there's no guarantee that "2K Sports" would even bother making PC games.
So, I personally think that this deal might even be worse than EA's NFL deal. PC gamers stand to get the shaft on baseball if VC/Take 2 do not opt to port their licensed game to PC, and that would be very unfair to the PC baseball loyalists- and they are many.
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