Michael Bluth
06-04-2003, 10:32 PM
June 04, 2003 - According to Gamestop, Sega's new football game will no longer be called NFL 2K4, but ESPN NFL Football. The game's release date has also been changed from August first to September second. If this is true, that means that the game's main competitor, Madden NFL 2004, will be out a full month before Sega's struggling franchise.
When Sega bought the rights to the ESPN license across all of their sports games in 2002, the rights were granted so late they had little time to fully implement all of the ESPN personalities and attitude associated with the cable sports network. This season, however, Sega promises that the ESPN talent will be included in all of their sports titles, as well as using stat pages that look like they were ripped straight from espn.com.
Last year Sega forecasted sales in the millions, but instead of reaping the rewards of their critically-acclaimed game, Sega's football title was still outsold 10-1 by Madden NFL 2003. One of the main reasons attributed to this sales disaster was the fact that Sega released commercial's that looked almost identical to the ads for the Madden series. And since Madden is the better known of the two when it comes to the mainstream audience, Sega essentially spent all of their money to help push their competitor's games right off of the shelves.
Adding the ESPN name, however, is not an instant cure-all for sales. A few years ago, Konami released ESPN NFL Primetime and it was one of the worst-selling (and most poorly-rated) sports games in recent memory.
Sega has no official comment at this time, although a spokesman said that Sega Sports would be making a couple of big announcements about their NFL game in the near future. Whether the NBA and NHL games will also change their names to reflect the power of the ESPN license also remains to be seen.
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/422/422502p1.html
When Sega bought the rights to the ESPN license across all of their sports games in 2002, the rights were granted so late they had little time to fully implement all of the ESPN personalities and attitude associated with the cable sports network. This season, however, Sega promises that the ESPN talent will be included in all of their sports titles, as well as using stat pages that look like they were ripped straight from espn.com.
Last year Sega forecasted sales in the millions, but instead of reaping the rewards of their critically-acclaimed game, Sega's football title was still outsold 10-1 by Madden NFL 2003. One of the main reasons attributed to this sales disaster was the fact that Sega released commercial's that looked almost identical to the ads for the Madden series. And since Madden is the better known of the two when it comes to the mainstream audience, Sega essentially spent all of their money to help push their competitor's games right off of the shelves.
Adding the ESPN name, however, is not an instant cure-all for sales. A few years ago, Konami released ESPN NFL Primetime and it was one of the worst-selling (and most poorly-rated) sports games in recent memory.
Sega has no official comment at this time, although a spokesman said that Sega Sports would be making a couple of big announcements about their NFL game in the near future. Whether the NBA and NHL games will also change their names to reflect the power of the ESPN license also remains to be seen.
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/422/422502p1.html