In the past few years, gamers are confused by the multitude of pigskin titles out there. Madden (below,right), Fever, Gameday, Blitz ,and the more realistic and advanced NFL 2K (below,left) ,all crowd the football market. When gamers are confronted by so many choices, they opt out to what 
they are comfortable with, something they've heard of, something warm and cozy like your first blanket: Madden. While in no means a terrible game, it is definitely sub-par when it comes to advancement of the genre. Because EA realized their product sucks the big Madden, they had opted to go and purchase the rights for the NFL license for the last several years. Video game football ente
red a dark age for the last 4 years. Gamers everywhere were force-fed the inferior graphics of Madden that are painfully similar to the real Madden's inferior color commentary. What happened? Why was a superior product like 2K rubbed out of the market?
The NFL 2K series was introduced by Sega for its Dreamcast to address EA Sports's decision not to publish the Madden NFL series on the Dreamcast. The first two installments (NFL 2K and NFL 2K1) were exclusive to the Dreamcast, but with the demise of the Dreamcast, the NFL 2K series was repositioned as the main multiplatform rival to the Madden NFL series. Both series were released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. With the cancellation of the NFL GameDay (989 Sports) and NFL Fever (Microsoft Game Studios) series in 2003, NFL 2K (then ESPN NFL Football) truly became Madden NFL's primary competition.
In 2004, Sega signed a deal with Take-Two Interactive in which Global Star (Take-Two's low-price unit) distributed and co-published all titles in Sega's ESPN franchise. As a result, ESPN NFL 2K5 was priced at $19.99 the day it shipped (versus the typical new-release price of $49.99). This earned it a wide audience among more casual football fans on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It was also the first time that the ESPN NFL series managed to grab a significant chunk of market share over the competitor, the Madden NFL series. Before 2K5's release, the Madden NFL series had greatly outsold the ESPN NFL games. However, ESPN NFL 2K5 slightly outsold its counterpart, Madden 2005.
However, in December 2004, EA signed an exclusive agreement with the NFL, making Madden NFL the only series allowed to use NFL team and player names. EA also signed an agreement with ESPN to become the only licensee of ESPN's brand in sports games on all platforms. This was an immense blow to Sega's franchise in their MLB, NBA, and NHL series. Although the NFL 2K series is no longer made, fans of the game can download unofficial rosters made by other players by using an Action Replay device. In January, 2007, 2K Sports announced a spiritual successor in the NFL 2K series, in the form of All-Pro Football 2K8,(above) that will be released in the summer. With no other companies even close to the standards set by the NFL 2K series,or its successor, All-Pro Football 2K, it will be a long time before EA gets up off its lazy programming ass and produces a football title worthy of real football players.
For more info, check out the EA Sports and 2K websites,
they are comfortable with, something they've heard of, something warm and cozy like your first blanket: Madden. While in no means a terrible game, it is definitely sub-par when it comes to advancement of the genre. Because EA realized their product sucks the big Madden, they had opted to go and purchase the rights for the NFL license for the last several years. Video game football ente
red a dark age for the last 4 years. Gamers everywhere were force-fed the inferior graphics of Madden that are painfully similar to the real Madden's inferior color commentary. What happened? Why was a superior product like 2K rubbed out of the market?
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