Electronic Arts signs exclusive 50-year deal with air

EA announced this afternoon that, after weeks of negotiation, they now have exclusive rights to make games featuring air. This is a devastating blow to all companies who have one or more successful series taking place on land, or underground. Companies who built their franchises on flight simulators will most likely never recover.

This is the FOURTH installment in a series of aggressive tactics employed by EA as of late. First came their 5-year deal with the NFL granting them exclusive rights to the highly successful license. Then they announced a 4-year deal with the Arena Football League. EA then continued to ride the wave of aggressive takeovers by announcing just yesterday that they signed a whopping 15-year deal with ESPN, and now they've taken away the rights to air. Rockstar Games has responded by defiantly announcing the location of their next GTA game, which will be called "Grand Theft Auto: Atlantis".

All jokes aside, I can see why the gaming community is uneasy about EA's recent takeover of the sport-simulation genre. The first announcement didn't bother me, since I prefer the Madden series anyway. I agree that choice is always a good thing, and that's the only aspect of the deal that I found negative. The AFL announcement is a GOOD thing, because it gives the league more exposure, and gives gamers the opportunity to experience a different brand of football. Now that the ESPN license is going over to EA too, I'm now convinced that all the premature comparisons between EA and Microsoft were in fact accurate.

The only good thing that can come out of this is such a longshot it isn't even funny. As soon as the AFL deal was announced, I knew that the Canadian Football League is now the only brand of football available to other companies. Having a CFL game MIGHT increase interest in the league, which MIGHT in turn increase the money in the league, which MIGHT finally lead to the CFL having more than NINE FREAKING TEAMS! A guy can dream, can't he?