Biggest News
One thing's for sure: 2004 was not a quiet year on the gaming news front. Besides the usual hullabaloos at GDC and E3, there was plenty afoot for industry watchers to follow. But which event shook the industry enough to be deemed the Biggest News of 2004? Here's a hint--it's one of the five stories below:
After losing the Burnout license just three weeks into 2004, the once-mighty publisher saw its decline accelerate into a free fall. After Acclaim was the subject of several springtime lawsuits--including one by the Olsen twins--the company's primary creditor refused to lend it any more money. Then came a disastrous annual earnings call in mid June, reporting $56.4 million in losses. Over the next two months, Acclaim lost two more licenses and was delisted from NASDAQ. At the end of August, the company sent its staff home and closed its doors for good. Executives then officially threw in the towel on September 1, declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidating all company assets.
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Sega fired the first shot in the sports-franchise wars in June, announcing that as part of a distribution deal with Take-Two Interactive, its critically acclaimed football game would go on sale at a bargain price point. In the subsequent months, ESPN NHL 2K5 and ESPN NBA 2K5 were also released at the same price, putting pressure on Electronic Arts to reciprocate. At the end of the summer, it did just that, dropping the prices of Madden NFL 2005, NHL 2005, and NBA Live 2005 to $29.95.
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Back in May, the well-respected athletic-entertainment trade magazine The Sports Business Journal reported that EA had reached a $1 billion, four-year deal with the NFL for exclusive game rights to the league's teams, stadiums, and player likenesses. At the time, both EA and Players Inc., the marketing arm of the NFL players' union, denied any such deal was in the works. But seven months later, the two companies announced a five-year exclusivity agreement. While the two companies did not disclose any financial details, the deal will end the heated competition between EA's Madden NFL franchise and Sega/Take-Two's ESPN NFL series. In fact, the deal means the earliest another non-mobile-phone game will be able to use any NFL assets will be 2010, well into the next generation of consoles.
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On November 21, Nintendo drew first blood in the handheld wars when it launched the DS in North America. However, the successful launch of its $149 dual-screen portable was overshadowed by the looming release of the PSP early next year. While no US price has been set, the revelation about the Japanese pricing means Sony's portable game system--which can also play movies and music--will be directly competitive with the DS, in terms of cost.
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The nasty underbelly of the game industry was exposed when court documents surfaced that outlined an all-but-unknown, years-long legal struggle between the developer and the publisher of Half-Life 2. The dispute began in 1999, but turned nasty in 2002, when VU Games sued Valve for concealing the development of its Steam download service, which circumvents the retail supply chain that provides the publisher's profits. Valve countersued, claiming that VU Games had cost Valve profits by delaying the release of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. VU Games filed another motion "to compel production of [Half-Life 2] source code." Perhaps not so coincidentally, the release candidate for Half-Life 2 was submitted by Valve the day the motion was filed.
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And the Winner is...
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