The winningest team in football isn't the New England Patriots. It's Electronic Arts Inc., makers of Madden NFL, the dominant football video game for more than a decade. With Madden's first-rate production values and millions of loyal fans, its makers had almost forgotten what real competition looks like. But they're getting a refresher course these days, at the hands of the Japanese game publisher Sega, whose new NFL football game is one of the year's surprise hits.
For years, Sega has sold a line of high-quality sports games under the aegis of cable TV network ESPN, with limited success. "The critical acclaim that these games have achieved really has been second to none," said Steve Raab, senior vice president of marketing for ESPN Videogames at Sega. "Commercially, they haven't had the same widespread success."
Raab was brought in to revitalize the ESPN brand -- not just the football game, but the company's hockey, baseball, and basketball titles as well. He could see nothing wrong with the product, so Raab tackled the price. At a time when high-end console games routinely sell for $50, Sega priced its games at just $20.
It worked. Between July and September, the latest football title, ESPN NFL 2K5, sold 2 million copies. That's almost half as many as Madden has sold. Suddenly, Sega's on the verge of becoming a player in sports gaming, and EA is looking over its shoulder for the first time in years.
Is Sega skimping on quality? Hardly. The only bad thing about ESPN NFL 2K5 is its dreadful name. The underlying software is first-rate. No surprise there -- it was developed by Visual Concepts of San Rafael, Calif., a Sega subsidiary that created the original Madden game 15 years ago.
The company hasn't lost the knack. ESPN NFL 2K5 has garnered raves from gaming magazines, and for good reason. The graphics are excellent, arguably better than Madden's. The game play is sophisticated yet user-friendly. While Madden offers fine tutorials on the fundamentals of football, the ESPN game does a better job of teaching how to play football on a game console. Confused about which buttons to push and when? A narrated video will teach you the basics.
So which game is better? That's a judgment call. But NFL 2K5 is at least as good, and for $30 less.
That's good enough for Kendrick Chua, a 30-year-old technology worker in Jacksonville, Fla., who passed up Madden to purchase the ESPN football game. "I recognize that it and Madden NFL 2005 are essentially equivalent games," Chua said. "A lot of the game-play mechanisms and features are very, very similar." But the lower price was tempting. Besides, Chua said that he's often been disappointed with other EA titles, such as the company's Ultima line of fantasy games. "Their customer service is terrible, [and] their products are frequently flawed and buggy," Chua said. "Sega has never disappointed me and has always given me great satisfaction as a video game consumer."
Madden still remains the king of sports gaming, moving more than 4 million units at its traditional $50 price. But EA spokesman Jeff Brown admits that Sega has gotten his company's attention. "Their entry proved that a $20 football game appeals to more casual players," Brown said. He thinks that most of the 2 million buyers of the ESPN football game are first-time players willing to part with $20 to get their feet wet. "We're now studying how a cheaper product may be bringing new players into the football category," said Brown. "That could be a valuable piece of research for growing the category."
EA may already be trying that tactic with its NBA basketball game. The latest edition abandons the traditional $50 price tag, selling instead for $39. EA's even running a promotion on its website -- buy two of the company's sports titles and get a third free. Brown says his company has done such promotions in the past, as a way of winning new customers.
But EA recently predicted lower profits during the Christmas season, as it cuts prices to fend off stronger competition. In football, that's called a "prevent defense." You use it when the other team's got the ball and time is running out.
