Who owns madden nfl

But one thing has remained consistent: The football franchise is still a perennial bestseller for the game publisher. Madden plays an important role in EA's library of annual releases. That's not surprising, considering Madden has no real competition and football has become the unofficial American pastime.

Related story: Nintendo unveils new '2DS'. But that success does come with a price. Those are high expectations. But the game appears to be off to a slow start this year, according to Stern Agee video game analyst Arvind Bhatia. For the first time in over 15 years, "Madden" is getting some competition in the world of football video games. The NFL revealed on Tuesday morning that it's ending its years-long exclusivity deal with Electronic Arts on football games.

That new arrangement encompasses a "multi-year" deal that includes "multiple future video games" — the first of which is expected to arrive next year, in Football fans and professional critics have complained for years about "Madden.

Tuesday's news of the new partnership between 2K and the NFL is a move toward a potential future with multiple companies competing in the football video game market.

Notably, 2K says the games it's creating are "non-simulation football game experiences" described as "fun, approachable and social experiences. Representatives for 2K and the NFL didn't immediately respond to request for comment.

Financial terms of the deal between 2K and the NFL weren't disclosed, nor is it clear how long this partnership will last; the agreement involves "several" games, presumably planned for release across several years. Our agreements have always allowed for non-exclusive development of non-simulation games on various platforms.

Our commitment to NFL fans, which spans almost 30 years, has never been stronger, and we're having our biggest year yet.

So it should be no surprise then that when the football giant sat down with Trip Hawkins and Joe Ybarra of Electronic Arts in to discuss what would become John Madden Football , the conversation took place on a train traveling from Denver to Oakland. EA founder Hawkins, an avid Strat-O-Matic football player, had long wanted to make a realistic football game for computers.

With the recent success of the Apple II and other mass-market hardware, there was finally a platform that could make that dream a reality. But in order to truly achieve a realistic game, Hawkins wanted a football mind on his team. He wanted John Madden. Madden had signed a contract to endorse a game for EA by this point, but there was still debate over what kind of game was going to be made.

Hawkins and Ybarra laid out their game plan. They wanted to make the most realistic game possible. Real playbooks and formations with maybe seven players on each side…. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Hawkins countered that a lower player count on the field would allow the game to run at a faster frame rate, but Madden made it clear there would be 22 players on the screen or there would be no game.

The game was in development for four years, largely because of legal trouble with Bethesda Softworks, a company that had made a similar football sim and was at one point under contract with EA to help develop the Madden game. It did indeed feature 22 players on the screen, but it also suffered from slow performance and a limited feature set as a result. The Sega and EA partnership remains to this day one of the strangest in the history of the industry.

Sega was looking for a new first-party title for the Genesis, but because they lacked the resources to make it, the company outsourced the game to the developer that was already making a competing game. And that was no accident. EA started with Madden as its foundation, but then stripped the playbook and cut the realism of the graphics. Madden ended up being the superior product, but both games were on best-seller lists that holiday season. The strange rivalry and sales success of both titles helped the bit era of gaming take off.

The Sega Genesis had been in competition with the Super Nintendo, and prior to the release of the football titles, Nintendo was the clear market leader. But with the success of both Madden and Montana franchises, the Genesis quickly developed a reputation as being the best console for sports games.

The market expanded. High school and college jocks who would normally be more likely to taunt someone who identified as a video game nerd suddenly found themselves playing for bragging rights on all-night sessions of Madden. The rivalry between the games continued and became especially heated in when Sega was the first company to obtain an official NFL license.

Real uniforms, stadiums, and logos left Madden in the dust. It took a while, but the truly realistic game first envisioned by Hawkins was now a reality.

The first bit Madden was actually on the 3DO , a doomed and short-lived console launched by Hawkins after he left EA. But the game served as a test drive that prepared EA for later years.