Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

[Critical Kills]

Looking forward to reading that Chris!

[SmashMan]

Quote: Originally Posted by ODogg

Look I want competition with Madden just as bad as anyone here but the fact that 2K underpriced their game (and let's face it ESPN2K5 was severely underpriced for one reason, to get a foothold in the market, not because that was the normal price going forward) should not mean EA has to underprice their football games from then on out. EA charges the going rate for their games the same as anyone. This would carry much more weight if 2K Sports sold NBA 2K11 and all of their other sports games for $19.99 since NFL2K5 was out but we all know that's not the case.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts too. I don't see why 2K temporarily setting a lower price makes that price the new standard.

I'm also looking forward to Chris' article.

[jmik58]

Quote: Originally Posted by kng23rich

It's $60 because every other new game is $60.............

My thoughts as well. Won't they be able to use this argument? The makers of Tomb Raider have exclusive rights to Ms. Croft... aren't they inflating the cost with their monopoly over the rights to her character? For any character?

I could be off, but it sounds similar to me.

[ngreatshark]

I think this is frivilous, especially all these years later. The argument I see here is that, Madden did bring the cost of their game down to 29.99, demonstrating that they could sell a football game for that price. But then the following year they sold it for 60. The question being if you sold last years game for 30, why do you have to sell the following game for twice the price, with the only difference being now that you now hold exclusive rights to make NFL games for consoles.

2k didn't do themselves any favors selling their game for 19.99. Their distribution deal with Take-Two And Global Star allowed it to happen, but even though the game sold well enough, I don't think it ended up bringing in alot of revenue. And I don't think a 2K6 would have sold for that price, based off all the other 2k6 games that followed. I don't think it was a long term plan, I think Sega at the time wanted to do something to get a bigger market share of the target audience, they realized how good of a game they had, but they just couldn't get passed the brainwashed masses that were buying a game soley based off a name.

Madden has become synonymous with video game football, nobody was complaining about it's flaws then because all they cared about was "having Madden". So Sega came to the conclusion that if we could at least get people to try our game, at some point the game it will sell itself, and they basically gave the game away. I don't think the NFL was happy with them selling the game for 20 bucks, maybe they get some residual income based on how well the game sells and the profit margin it makes and on that game their had to be close to none. So that might have been what pushed the NFL to see out an excluisve deal in order to prevent something like that from happening again.

On one side it's like a company like Walmart, who drives prices so ridiculously low that the smaller stores can't compete and evenutally end up going out of buisness, though I don't think this could have been 2ks long term plan, because they would have gone under before EA did. But on the other side it's like companies like NIKE and Under Armour, and Northface, who want to dictate what things should be sold for, and for companines who try to undersell or cut prices on their merchanside they attempt to penalize them, which is what it looks like the NFL did in this case.

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by jaymee13

Ummm how is this possible? EA charges as much for a video game as every other new game on the market. $60 xbox 360 and ps3, $50 for Wii, and $40 for ps2 (I think). I for one will not be joining this lawsuit because I don't find it right to fault a video game maker for landing exclusive rights to make the game and not charge any more than any other game. The only object I feel that falls under that assumption is apple's iPhone and the AT&T exclusivity.

Other video games, from other genres, aren't relevant. The issue is that the exclusive deal harmed consumers regarding football video games. NFL 2k5 was priced at 19.95, so EA had to lower the price of their game to 29.99. Soon after this pricing war EA signed the exclusive deal with the NFL, eliminating the competition, and they subsequently raised the price of Madden back to 49.95. The issue is not the price of other video games from other genres. It's the fact that EA sports was selling Madden for 29.99 before the exclusive license, eliminated the competition, and returned the price back to 49.99.

For this argument football games, and other games are totally different products. Look at it this way, there are many different soft drinks. Let's say that Coca-Cola and Pepsi are in a pricing war. Coca-Cola signs a deal with Pepsi to stop selling diet Pepsi only, and then raises the price of diet Coke back to it's original price. You don't see any problem with that ?

[RaychelSnr]

Blog is up, be sure to comment on it THERE

http://www.operationsports.com/MMChr...esented-facts/

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by LiquorLogic

Other video games, from other genres, aren't relevant. The issue is that the exclusive deal harmed consumers regarding football video games. NFL 2k5 was priced at 19.95, so EA had to lower the price of their game to 29.99. Soon after this pricing war EA signed the exclusive deal with the NFL, eliminating the competition, and they subsequently raised the price of Madden back to 49.95. The issue is not the price of other video games from other genres. It's the fact that EA sports was selling Madden for 29.99 before the exclusive license, eliminated the competition, and returned the price back to 49.99. For this argument football games, and other games are totally different products. Look at it this way, there are many different soft drinks. Let's say that Coca-Cola and Pepsi are in a pricing war. Coca-Cola signs a deal with Pepsi to stop selling diet Pepsi only, and then raises the price of diet Coke back to it's original price. You don't see any problem with that ?

While there'd be a problem with that your analogy is flawed.

In this case, it'd be like Wal-Mart was selling both Coke and Pepsi and decided they only wanted to sell one or the other so they told both companies to offer bids to them in order to keep the prior arrangement of selling their products in Wal-mart and they award the best bid to Coke and thus Coca-Cola gets to sell their products exclusivly in Wal-Mart. That's not even exactly how this worked, but it's a lot closer than what you said.

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by MMChrisS

While there'd be a problem with that your analogy is flawed. In this case, it'd be like Wal-Mart was selling both Coke and Pepsi and decided they only wanted to sell one or the other so they told both companies to offer bids to them in order to keep the prior arrangement of selling their products in Wal-mart and they award the best bid to Coke and thus Coca-Cola gets to sell their products exclusivly in Wal-Mart. That's not even exactly how this worked, but it's a lot closer than what you said.

No, my analogy is fine. Two companies are in a pricing war forcing them to lower the price of their products, and one company, however they do it, eliminates the other competitor and subsequently raises the price to what it was originally. That's the issue; the fact that 2k was out bid by EA for the license isn't.

Here's another analogy: you have two drug dealers in a pricing war so one of them eliminates the other one, permanently, and then starts selling his product at the price it was originally. That's no different, other than being more violent, then what EA did; they eliminated the competition so they could sell Madden at the price it was prior to the pricing war with 2k.

Had EA kept the price of Madden at 29.95 after gaining the license, or never moved it down from 49.95 in the first place, this lawsuit wouldn't have any legs; however, the fact remains that EA lowered their price to compete with 2k, eliminated 2k, and then returned Madden to it's original price.