Beefjack: The Exclusive License Game: Has It Been Good For Gaming?

Beefjack Writes: A few years back, the entrepreneurial people at Electronic Arts purchased the exclusive rights to publish titles using the official NFL licensing. 2K Sports struck back by purchasing exclusive baseball third party rights, and next thing we knew the competition element of game development was almost gone. Sure, 2K tried its hand on the gridiron with All-Pro Football, and yes, 2K has been walloped by Sony’s first party baseball title, MLB: The Show, but the days of true rivalries are gone. Gamers began to cry out in frustration that great sports games would no longer be made since developers now lacked competition to motivate them. Well, we have distanced ourselves quite a bit from those initial emotions, and with the possibility of those exclusive contracts running out and not being renewed if the Supreme Court decides that these practices are monopolies, it seems like as good a time as any to find out if buying licensing rights really had a major affect on the quality of games.