What did you think about EA's big move into eSports announced during their press conference on Sunday?

Jayson Young: I like how Electronic Arts is adding more events to keep people playing Madden past the Super Bowl, but I was disappointed that other sports games weren't a part of Peter Moore's eSports presentation. When is EA going to hold some NHL tournaments, for example? The EA Sports Hockey League is a natural fit for multiplayer championships, especially since NHL 16 successfully freed that mode from microtransactions and exploitative player builds. NBA 2K16's controversial Road to the Finals setup definitely could have benefited from a more balanced and less greedy/grindy character selection system, similar to the one that EA Canada created for NHL 16.

Online team play is also overdue to make a return in Madden, considering how popular MyPark has become in NBA 2K. Tiburon's original OTP model wasn't very well-designed, but I still believe a 7 vs. 7 playground mode that doesn't include CPU bots or multiple linemen spots could turn Madden NFL 17 into an exciting team sport, instead of continuing to host these monotonous head to head matches where the game's top competitors are just taking turns running the same money plays that will best-exploit the 20 AI players on the field who aren't being user-controlled.

Ben Vollmer: I think the desire for a sports video games to have their own slice of the competitive market has definitely been there. EA's move will probably prove to be pretty lucrative, as there is little in the way of sports video game competition out there. With companies like Twitch giving eSports major exposure, it's hard not to see how this could be a huge success.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about all of this is that Madden already has a really competitive fanbase. It will be interesting to see what kinds of rules, regulations and play styles are brought to the table. Hopefully their plans will take off and we'll see other sports introduced to the field as well

"It will be interesting to see what kinds of rules, regulations and play styles are brought to the table."

Cicero: My recent piece about Madden called for them to invest heavily in esports and it sounder like they listened! They're very serious about turning this into a thing that even casual players will pay attention to and they given players a way to aspire to new heights. The tier system is brilliant, if you ask me! I can't wait to see it in action!

Chris Sanner: I have long wondered how long it would take EA to really jump into the arena of eSports. This is such an obvious direction that it's somewhat surprising they haven't yet tried to ramp this whole effort up. Draft Champions was obviously a mode designed with eSports in mind, and Ultimate Team -- in some ways -- has been a mode which was made for eSports. If you ask me, I think this is the direction we'll see sports games really head into over the next few years. There will be some stumbles and there will be some falls along the way, but it's almost certain eSports are going to dominate the sports gaming news cycle kind of like Ultimate Team has in prior years.