4.05.10 11:16 am by Brian
Here at The Sports Geeks, it isn’t all just sporting news and analysis; we like to touch on how sports play a role in other aspects of daily life as well. For this article, I’m taking a look at EA Sports’ Madden NFL video game franchise and a potential opportunity for this year’s demo to help teach fans about this year’s new playoff overtime rules.
Edit: Thanks go out to PastaPadre, a leader in the sports video game community, for mentioning this story in his April 13th, 2010 write-up on the Madden NFL 11 demo.
In the video game business, few games are as sure a sale as EA Sports’ yearly incarnation of the Madden NFL series. Since an exclusivity deal was struck between the NFL and EA Sports in December of 2004, the series has been the only officially-licensed video game representation of the league. While this move angered fans of the NFL 2K Sports series of football games, sales of Madden NFL have not shown any signs of slowing down; such is the safety of being the only licensed product on the market.
With the introduction of the current console generation, the Madden NFL team has put out a downloadable game demo on the online services for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 before the retail release of the full title for the past few versions of their title. Some might argue the necessity of such a demo—given that consumers surely know from year-to-year whether or not they’ll be making a purchase—but in some ways the demo has come to serve the role of a “teaser,” satisfying the appetites of gamers waiting for the new iteration of the game as the season approaches.
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11.05.09 12:32 pm by Pat
Before the 2009 Major League playoffs officially started, I was listening to ESPN Radio and Bud Selig was being interviewed on the Mike and Mike in the Morning show about the season and the upcoming post-season action. At one point he was asked about a salary cap as well as an international draft to prevent the inevitable bidding war that takes place between Boston and New York on the top international prospects. He was all in favor of the international draft which would allow all teams a shot at those players. He, however, was still opposed to a salary cap and said that it was not necessary to keep the league competitive and pointed out that since 2000, 23 of the 30 MLB teams have made a post-season appearance. A few weeks later on ESPN Radio I heard Colin Cowherd go on a rant on how a salary cap won’t help MLB and how more money just leads to more problems. Colin lost me somewhere between comparing team spending to income levels for families and how teams (if a salary cap were put in place) would just spend the money on scouting, coaching, facilities, etc. I could go on all day on how much I disagree with the sentiments of both Bud and Colin, but that isn’t the point of this article. I have always been a believer in leveling the playing field in professional sports and think that spending limits are needed to keep “small market” teams competitive. Hearing the stat about 23 out of 30 from Bud made me think about my stance on the salary cap. I decided that I needed to do a little more investigation into the numbers behind it to help support, or perhaps debunk, my thoughts on the salary cap and MLB.
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