Take-Two: Take that, Electronic Arts!



Last month, we discussed how videogame publisher Electronic Arts has agreed to pay ESPN $850 million for a 15-year licensing agreement that will make the publisher the sole licensee of the ESPN brand in all sports videogames. The agreement will take effect in 2006, and will last until 2021.



ESPN's current licensee for baseball videogames is Take-Two, and it publishes the ESPN MLB 2K series, which is available for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Take-Two's main competitor in the baseball videogame market is Electronic Arts, which publishes the MVP Baseball series (and which will, presumably, somehow incorporate the ESPN name in its series' name next year).



According to IGN, Take-Two has decided to publish its upcoming baseball game as "MLB 2K5", rather than as "ESPN MLB 2K5". Although the game--which will be available next month--will still contain ESPN images (e.g., overlays and cut scenes) along with the voices of ESPN announcers Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, it appears that Take-Two is already trying to diminish the ESPN product brand--which now offers substantially more value to Electronic Arts-- by removing the ESPN name.

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