Quote:
Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue
I haven't followed Take Two's sports titles all that closely, but I know EA has an exclusive licenese with the NFL (and maybe MLB? Or any other pro sports leagues?). Has there been any years were Madden was the only "pro football" game released for consoles? If so, that would be a very good natural experiment for market definition. If there was a year (or years) where Madden was it, the FTC could compare prices in those years against prices in years were Take Two published a competing game. If the prices were considerably different (5-10% or so) in the years where Madden was the only game in town, the FTC could likely determine that it is a separate market. If Madden's price was still the same, EA will argue that it was because it competes with all other video games and if they raised prices, consumers would just go buy something.
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EA holds the exclusive rights to the NFL. Take-Two has "exclusive third-party" MLB rights.
What you see with Madden in terms of pricing, though, isn't higher prices once they held exclusivity, but almost certainly prices that don't drop as quickly because there's no competition to hold their feet to the fire.