Topic: Take-Two Nabs MLB Rights; Visual Concepts

[WindyMan]

Take-Two gets almost-exclusive rights to pro baseball players, then acquires sports developer Visual Concepts from Sega.

Take-Two has had a pretty rough new year.  First they learn that Electronic Arts won exclusive rights for NFL games, and a few days later, they take the ESPN license from them as well, leaving the pubilsher with low hopes of becoming a sports giant.

Well, Take-Two has fired back with a shot of their own.  Starting with the 2006 MLB season, they will be the exclusive third-party holder of the Major Leauge Baseball Player's Association license.  This means that while other third-party publishers can still make baseball games with the MLB license (team names, ballparks, etc.), they cannot use the actual names of the players.

This might seem like a big blow to Electronic Arts, but there's something of a loophole in the workings of the deal.  Take-Two is the only third-party that has rights to the players, but the first-party publishers, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, can still get the license if they want it.  (Sony already has it with developer 989, and this deal does not affect their deal with the MLBPA.)  Additionally, there's nothing preventing EA from hooking up with a first party, and having them publish an Electronic Arts developed baseball game, with license in hand.

Take-Two has not yet announced any plans of a new baseball game in the works.  Since they will basically have the only complete baseball game available from a third party, it would seem logical that they would capitalize with a version on Nintendo systems.

In a related story, Take-Two has announced that they have bought out former Sega Sports developer Visual Concepts for the rock-bottom price of $24 million.  The purchase includes Kush games, the development team reponsible for the current line of ESPN 2K videogames.  The sale of the developer to Take-Two means that Sega will probably quit the sports arena for good, especially since EA has football and ESPN locked up for some time.

Take-Two and VC will still work with Sega.  Sega will publish some of Take-Two's games in the Asian markets (Japan, China, Korea, etc.), and distruibute Visual Concept-developed sports arcade games throughout Japan.  Though things didn't go the way that either publisher had hoped for, they both agree that continuing to work together would be in their best interests.

[foolish03]

This is a miniscule blow to EA compared to the nfl and espn deals.  Every little bit helps though. To hell with EA.

[Famicom]

As a fan of EA's MVP Baseball line (despite what anyone says about EA's milking, they took the utter crap that was Triple Play, turned it around and made probably the best baseball game ever) I'm saddened because this year's game will be the last for a long time. As a PC sports gamer I'm saddened becase the Take Two's 2k line doesn't make PC games, and I don't buy console sports games due to lack of "flexibility" (mods, roster updates, etc). It also sucks that Sega got completely shafted out of the sports genre. But as a Nintendo fan, there's a silver lining in this deal that Nintendo very well could capitalize on. While it's still undetermined if TT/VC will skip the Cube in the future (and with Revolution on the horizon next year, it's probably a moot point), the gate is left wide open for them to jump in and kick off another string of licensed baseball titles. The N64 Griffey titles weren't that great, but they were respectable games, and while Ninty can't build off that name anymore (because you know, Griffey sucks now and is no longer with the Mariners) it would be in their best interests to snatch up a good developer and get in on this. But these are things people have been saying for a while now....

[WuTangTurtle]

What ppl forget is that 989 sports and The Microsoft sports development studios took a year off to get their game on par with EA and Sega, only to find out that EA screwed everyone.

All their work during the abscence is practically a waste of time and money.

Sega isn't the only one effected.

I hope Nintendo finds a good dev. studio to rock EA.

[Knoxxville]

BOOYAH!!

[Pale]

It makes me wonder if they didn't really take a year off...they just had the news earlier so they knew it was pointless to develope something.

[Djunknown]

It seems Sega is going for the Japan-centric route with this move. RIP the 2k series.

Question is, will Take Two continue what Sega has done and not support its sports game for the 'Cube? Granted, there's proabably one season left before the next batch of consoles are supposed to to come out. Take Two hasn't really shown the big N much love this time around...