I Am Willing to Sign an Exclusive License
My in-box is bursting with this story (from Yahoo)http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051014/media_nm/media_spielberg_dc:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts Inc., the world's biggest video game publisher, said on Friday they are teaming up to develop three original video games.
Spielberg, a video game enthusiast and co-founder of movie studio DreamWorks SKG, will work with EA's Los Angeles studio on the concept, story and design of the games.
EA, whose shares jumped 3.5 percent in morning trading, did not disclose the terms of the multiyear, exclusive agreement.
Look. I may be totally, absolutely wrong about Electronic Arts.
Then again, I may not be. And again, here's an exclusive agreement that's going to cost them big, big money. What's the more likely scenario?
#1--Steven Spielberg goes to EA and says "Let's do a deal. Make three games, I'll slap my name on them, and I'll retain film and television rights. I desperately want to do this because movies based on games are big box office. Huge, really."
or
#2--EA drives a Wells Fargo truck filled with cash to Spielberg's house, says "get a shovel," and then says "sign here."
Call me crazy, but I'm betting on #2.
Exclusive sports licenses. Exclusive licenses with prominent Hollywood directors (and don't think this is the last one). Apparently, EA has presses that print money all day long.
This is what I know. I know that many times companies will do high-profile, high-publicity deals to cover up deteriorating business fundamentals. And boy, these deals have that kind of smell about them.
Spielberg does get to retain film/television rights to the three games that get developed. Great. I guess we can expect some verrrry original concepts in these games, since they're being developed from the start with film and television in mind. No reason to worry about them being, say, formulaic instead of innovative.
Why, I expect them to be groundbreaking.
Here's a very funny excerpt from the Yahoo article:
More recently, popular games, whose rich stories are ripe for leaping from computer monitor to the big screen, have been developed into feature films. They include Universal Pictures' monster-chase epic "Doom," which opens this month, and the alien battle adventure "Halo," the best-selling title for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox, due in 2007.
Oh yes. Doom featured a rich story. And Halo was all about the story. Forget Peter Jackson as director--maybe David Mamet is still available.
These stories certainly are "ripe" for development.
Now, in all seriousness, here's the real problem with this deal: the demographic that drives video game sales is not the demographic that gives a shit about Steven Spielberg. And all the marketing dollars in the world won't fix that.
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