History of: Sega Sports

It’s Thinking… of Sports

The chance for vindication came with the announcement of the Saturn’s replacement, the Dreamcast, which was released in America on September 9, 1999. The work Visual Concepts had done on games like NBA Action ’98 impressed SOA president Bernie Stolar enough to convince him that the developer would be able to match or surpass anything the competition had to offer, so Sega officially acquired it for $10 million shortly before the Dreamcast’s launch in order to secure its position in the sports market.  The up-and-coming developer’s skills would be invaluable for giving the Dreamcast the kind of launch the Saturn never had. “Visual Concepts was a very, very key part of this because they made all the sports titles,” Stolar proudly boasted. “And if you looked at the sports titles on Dreamcast, they far surpassed EA’s sports titles. Our football game at the time, NFL 2K, was far superior to Madden. Everybody agreed to that once they came out.”

This, of course, didn’t sit well with Electronic Arts, which reportedly wanted to be the only sports publisher on Sega’s new console. According to EA head Bing Gordon, there were a series of situations leading up to the Dreamcast launch that nourished a growing skepticism within his company towards supporting the fledgling console. First, EA didn’t like the fact that Sega wasn’t initially sure whether or not to include a modem with the machine. The next problem may have involved Sega’s choice of another chipset over that of 3Dfx, a company in which EA had major stock investments. The chipset chosen by Sega of Japan was not considered standard and won out over the expressed displeasure of SOA executives. While it’s possible that EA was offended from a business standpoint that 3Dfx lost its bid, it was most certainly displeased with the selected chipset in regards to programming. According to Gordon, his chief technical officer was livid at the set chosen to run the Dreamcast because it wasn’t industry standard and had no software libraries available.

Either of these complaints may sound like enough to make EA rethink its position with Sega, but perhaps the main reason it snubbed its old ally’s hardware was because of licensing. At the time, Sega was still in desperate financial straits, and it chose not to offer the Madden publisher the kind of deal it had previously enjoyed as a third party. When Gordon threatened to break camp and leave the negotiations, Sega seemed indifferent. Gordon quit the talks, and EA walked away from the partner it had stood with for more than a decade. “The Dreamcast became the system that EA developers least wanted to work on the in the history of systems at EA,” Gordon told Gamasutra. He then made waves in the industry by telling the press that “Dreamcast can’t succeed without EA.”

Of course, Sega executives remember things a bit differently. Stolar recalls that EA left the negotiating table because Gordon wanted exclusivity in the sports arena. Stolar offered third party exclusivity, which meant that Madden and NBA Live would only have to compete with Sega Sports. Gordon, wanting unchallenged dominance over the entire genre, refused, and the talks ended. At the time, Stolar was confident that the Dreamcast could succeed without EA because of the incredibly high quality of the Sega Sports brand. What he possibly failed to account for was the prestige a major publisher like EA brought to a hardware platform, and the inability to secure the largest game maker in the world may have caused other companies to shy away from the Dreamcast and instead await the upcoming Playstation 2.

Covering the entire sports genre without its best-known publisher was an almost Herculean task. Even though other third parties were developing titles of their own, none were as recognized or as prolific as Sega Sports and EA Sports. Without the latter’s involvement, it was up to Sega alone to provide the lion’s share of releases, and obtaining the necessary profit margin from each game to compensate for EA’s absence was difficult. Sega Director of Channel Marketing Scott Lambrecht illustrated the point to Sega-16 via email. “You don’t make much money on sports titles because of all of the licenses right and fees involved. The league, the players union, the stadium image rights, etc. – not to mention that the games are/were very complicated to program so the development cost is very high. Plus, you have to spend big bucks to market them. Our cost was about $28 in total and we were selling to retail for about $32 for a $39.95 MSRP… not a lot of margin. You have to sell over a million units to make money.”

Still, Stolar and Sega were undaunted. The Dreamcast’s launch proved to be the most successful in gaming history up to that point, and hopes ran high for a major Sega comeback. The incredible NFL2K debuted alongside the sleek new machine, and longtime Sega fans were pleased to see the Sega Sports logo prominently displayed on the cover alongside Minnesota Vikings star Randy Moss. Much like the celebrity sports faces of the 16-bit era, Moss simply lent his name and likeness to the game, and he had no involvement in its creation. This had little effect on sales, and the game quickly became the reason to own Sega’s new machine, with many gamers choosing it over even Sonic The Hedgehog’s triumphant return in Sonic Adventure. In truth, there was so much right with NFL2K that it was hard not to want it. Incredible visuals, fluid gameplay, and convenient use of the VMU memory card to call plays secretly and to update rosters made even diehard Sega haters take a second look. The game was unlike anything on other consoles, and it was considered by many to be the Dreamcast’s true killer app.

The 2001 sequel went even farther. Moss and other players like Tom Brady and Tyrone Wheatley provided new animations via motion capture animation, and the running game was substantially improved. Most importantly, the series offered online play for the first time. Implementation over the new SegaNet service was problematic, but the developers attributed this to the slow nature of the 56k connection the Dreamcast modem could obtain. Online functionality was to be a major drawing point of the Dreamcast, and many of the same team that worked on bringing NFL 2K1 to SegaNet also worked on the first console basketball game with a dedicated online mode, NBA 2K1. This gave a sense of uniformity to the two major guns in SegaNet’s arsenal, given that most of the other Sega Sports games were being developed by different teams, such as Blackbox Games with NHL 2K and AM1 with World Series Baseball or localized from Japan, as was the case with series like Virtua Tennis.

Sega basketball was also enjoying a renaissance. Shortly after the Dreamcast arrived, the NBA 2K series slam-dunked its way to stellar reviews and solid sales. Senior producer Marcus Matthews and his team worked closely with Visual Concepts to ensure that the return of Sega’s premier NBA franchise would be worth the wait. Contrary to EA’s NBA Live, which was scattered across the Playstation and N64, NBA 2K had the advantage of being developed for a single platform. This allowed the developers to work towards creating a game that was more realistic than anything available on the aging hardware of the previous generation without having to dedicate time and resources to porting it to other machines. The attention to detail they sought was unlike anything seen before. “Our game was only going to be on Dreamcast,” Matthews told Courtcred.com, “so we could put all our efforts into trying to make our game look more realistic than anything you’d ever seen before.” Jersey detail, hair length, even tattoos were all taken into account when modeling the different players.

Matthews wanted a more action-oriented, fast break style of gameplay, compared to the slower Live, and while he didn’t want the game to be too arcade-like, it needed to have the same adrenaline-pumping quickness that made those types of games so much fun. To this end, his team flew around the country, talking to video gamers about their basketball game preferences wherever they found them. “We just went out and interviewed and watched people who played,” he said. “We brought them in and talked to them about what they did and didn’t like about the current basketball games. Were the buttons too complicated? Were some of the plays too complicated on some of these other games? We actually went out to the real gamers, and that’s where a lot of our feedback came from.”

The manner in which the first cover athlete was chosen was not as scientific. Many of the Sega Sports marketing team working with NBA 2K had come from Reebok shoes, and at the time Philadelphia ’76ers star Allen Iverson was signed with the sneaker icon. Conversations began, and Iverson was soon chosen as the face of Sega’s newest basketball title. Though he had his problems off the court, Iverson was very popular at the time and his affiliation with Reebok had helped increase its profits by 33%. Just as with Randy Moss and NFL 2K, his involvement with the game he endorsed went hardly any further than the cover on which he appeared.

Ironically, basketball legend Michael Jordan had been considered for the spot, but he refused to only settle for his part of the league license the NBA offered for the use of all its players. Since his retirement in 1999, Jordan had became increasing uninterested in pursuing new endorsements unless he was given an ownership stake or allowed to have creative input. Sega was unwilling to assume this extra cost and chose Iverson instead. Players still had the ability to create Jordan using the game’s robust create-a-player feature, but he would not actually appear on the cover of an NBA 2K game until the 2011 version (considered by many to be the best NBA game ever made).

After being out of the spotlight for so long, it finally seemed as though Sega was firing on all cylinders with the Dreamcast. It had a sexy and powerful piece of hardware, an online plan, Sonic at launch, and excellent sports titles rounding out an impressive and creative library. Sports games had become such a key part of the console’s identity that Sega even released a special black Sega Sports version in North America, calling it the “ultimate sports gaming system.” In all, three installments of both the basketball and football series found success on the machine, as well as NCAA College Football 2K2 and two editions each of NHL 2K and World Series Baseball, all bearing the Sega Sports banner. There were even ports of arcade sports games from Japan, such as Virtua Tennis and Virtua Striker, which arrived under a modified “Sega Sports Arcade” label. The Dreamcast truly seemed like the perfect machine for sports fans.

Sadly, this good fortune was not to last and Sega’s own lack of marketing muscle ultimately caused its sports brand to lose steam against the EA monster. Even with a return to licensing major athletes to promote its products, the company was simply in no shape to match EA’s marketing budget. Sega allocated $35 million for advertising in 2003 but still lost the brand recognition contest against Madden. Whether or not its games were better made little difference; there was simply no way Sega could go toe-to-toe with the seemingly limitless resources of its chief sports competitor. EA won the psychological war in the minds of consumers, edging out Sega in an area that had once been its specialty. “We absolutely crushed them in marketing,” said Jeff Odiorne, the creative director for EA’s longtime advertising agency. “Even if the games are even, we win.”

Sega’s marketing woes is considered by many to be the major weakness that kept it from regaining its former glory. The hardware was there, and so were the games and a solid online infrastructure. Retailers and developers were supportive enough, but Sega simply did not have enough money to promote its wares as needed. Throughout 2000, the Dreamcast slipped farther and farther behind in sales, until the writing became sadly apparent to everyone. Sega announced its discontinuation in January of 2001, after a scant 16 months. Once again, fans were left wondering what was to become of their favorite sports franchises, but this time the fear was truly warranted. No longer was it merely an issue of waiting for the next console. Sega’s announcement that it would leave the hardware industry for good was a major blow to its supporters, and few knew where the company would be headed and what part Sega Sports would play in that new direction.

Sports & the Third Party

Initially, the end of Sega’s time as a console maker did nothing to change its role in software development. The 2K football and basketball series, along with World Series Baseball, continued after the Dreamcast was put to bed, and Sega Sports dug itself in on the Xbox, GameCube and Playstation 2. Sports were playing a major role in providing Sega with much-needed sales to keep it, as rival EA would put it, “in the game,” and according to new SOA president Peter Moore they accounted for a staggering 46% of the company’s revenue by late 2001.

By the time the 2002 editions rolled onto store shelves, Sega had set aside $20 million for advertising.  It secured the exclusive license to the Rose Bowl for its NCAA football game, launched a website devoted exclusively to the sports line and partnered with major rental outlets like Hollywood and Blockbuster Video to offer promotions that included discounts for purchasing Sega Sports titles. Vice president of Business Strategies and Corporate Affairs Charles Bellfield was confident that Sega Sports could take on the Madden machine. “The reality is that we already sell more sports games than EA does,” he proclaimed. “We were the first to offer online console sports gaming, and we’ll continue to give sports gamers features that they can’t get from EA or anyone else.”

The marketing blitz was part of a tactic to give the brand more of its own identity and move it away from Sega’s core business. This gave some the impression that the publisher was looking to dump its sports division entirely. “What’s different this year,” explained Stacey Kerr, product manager for the line, “is Sega Sports is really going to become its own entity and step a little bit away from Sega.” NFL 2K2 became the first ever title published by Sega to be released on a hardware platform other than its own, but behind all the marketing and press releases, the hourglass had been turned, and the sands began to slowly run out for the Sega Sports label.

Truthfully, it was hard to not notice that the overall variety of the line had been suffering severe reductions since before the end of the Saturn era. Only the most popular sports seemed to survive, and among the top sellers was basketball. The NBA 2K series joined its football, tennis, hockey and baseball siblings as one of the few existing Sega Sports titles to survive Sega’s transition to third party status. The franchise proved to be a key component of the new “platform agnostic” mentality pervading throughout the company, and it still represents perhaps the one sport in which Sega fans can honestly say that EA lost.

Even with the optimistic start, the fate of most of Sega’s sports line has been mixed since the move to multi-platform, but one series has managed to stay above the controversy. Virtua Tennis, which received a name change in 2001 to better identify it with other Sega Sports entries in the 2K line, served up a tight and invigorating package to which fans instantly took. The rechristened Tennis 2K2 sported the Williams sisters on its cover and featured fluid control and multiple modes of play. After a single appearance on the Playstation 2 a year later, it eventually returned to its original name and has seen yearly releases since. Virtua Tennis is one of the few remaining sports games to still be published by Sega itself.

Despite Product Manager Stacey Kerr’s reassuring comments in regards to the apparent shift in Sega’s focus regarding sports games, Sega Sports was indeed moving far more than just “a little bit” from the publisher. In truth, Sega as a whole was inching its way out of the sports market altogether. Solid evidence of this can be found in two key decisions made in 2002. First, Sega opted to cancel the Nintendo GameCube version of World Series Baseball 2K3 and then cease publishing sports titles for the console altogether. Reportedly, poor sales were to blame, but while they were exceptionally so on Nintendo’s machine, all other platforms experienced a decline as well. However, Sega Sports games continued to appear on both the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Second, the procurement of the ESPN branding to its games, at first advertised as a means to add realism and authenticity (Sega had commissioned a study which found that a whopping 74% of gamers wanted more realistic sports games), eventually led to the removal of the 2K suffix from the line. In the span of a single year, the Sega Sports logo disappeared entirely from Sega’s game packaging. The initial 2003 titles still had it, but by the next year, it was ESPN taking center stage. Never again would the acclaimed banner appear on the cover of any games.

A third visible step taken in this direction came in June of 2004 when Sega entered an agreement with Take-Two Interactive that allowed that company to co-publish its sports games. This caused much speculation as to just how committed Take-Two could be to a market in which it had never been a major player, and fans feared the deal meant that Sega was considering abandoning sports games completely. SOA executives dismissed such rumors by reassuring fans of its rich sports heritage and quality releases. It may have no longer been in the hardware business, but the publisher claimed that it was still eager to bring its wide array of games to sports fans everywhere.

Sadly, this was simply not true. Sega’s slow retreat from sports publishing may have started with the co-publishing agreement it signed with Take-Two Interactive, but what no one knew is just how far the deal went. It wasn’t until December 2004 that the maker of Grand Theft Auto revealed that it had actually been given the rights to purchase Visual Concepts (together with its Kush subsidiary) and Sega’s entire line of ESPN-themed sports games, which included NBA 2K, Major League Baseball, NHL 2K, and the College Hoops series. Moreover, it gave Take-Two complete ownership of Visual Concept’s next football game, which would not have an NFL license due to EA’s exclusivity contract.

The whole deal was finally made public by Sega on January 24, 2005 through a press release. Sega quietly exited the market to the tune of a $24 million, no longer viewing sports games as a major part of its business strategy. President Hisao Oguchi tried to put a positive spin on the decision in his comments. “Sega is proud that it has fostered such a strong and critically-acclaimed sports franchise,” he wrote, trying to convince gamers that the move wasn’t a bad one. “We remain committed to the North American market, focusing on delivering innovative products that are equally as profitable as they are desirable to the western gamer.” SOA head Naoya Tsurumi was more direct in his remarks. “The ESPN video games line has not been a key profit driver in the North American market for Sega. While Sega recognizes the strength and depth of the ESPN video games franchise, we must remain committed to growing content that will help boost revenues across all western territories.” With these words, the one company that had managed to compete with EA longer than any other dropped the final curtain on a rich and innovative sports history.

The fate of the 2K line since Sega’s third party turn and the sale to Take-Two has been one of slow decay, with Take-Two’s actions suggesting its own desire to leave the sports genre behind, much the way Sega did. Of all the franchises purchased, only one continues to enjoy sustained success while the others have disappeared entirely. Only NBA 2K has achieved massive sales and accolades every year, and it is widely considered to be the standard in basketball titles on consoles, one that EA has been consistently unable to match. Its selection of rich and deep playing modes, both online and off, have been refined by Virtual Concepts to a science over the past decade. So high has the bar been set that EA has not produced a game to counter NBA 2K since 2009. To think that it all has its roots in a David Robinson-themed game with an isometric view and no real players or teams…

Other franchises were not as fortunate. World Series Baseball proved to be resilient for several years, surviving several incarnations until 2004, which marked the start of its decline. That year, the series got a name change to ESPN Major League Baseball 2K4, and though it lost the ESPN prefix the next year, it continued to appear on consoles without fail until 2012. That year, Take-Two Interactive secured third party MLB exclusivity, barring EA from using the license for its own baseball titles. However, the company declined to renew its license, citing a desire to focus on new properties. It is more likely that the decision had to do with yearly losses of around $30 million Take-Two had been experiencing since the license was obtained. The same situation caused the end of its hockey and college basketball series, so it seems unlikely that Take-Two will continue to compete in the baseball arena. Whatever the reason may have been, it all but marked the end for what had once been the best baseball series around and finally closed the door on World Series Baseball’s legacy.

Football suffered a similar fate. NFL 2K continued to put up an incredible fight, and it was only through EA’s efforts to lock up exclusivity with the NFL in December of 2004 (eventually followed by the PGA Tour, NASCAR, and other entities) that the competition was truly shut down. NFL 2K’s last hurrah before losing its license was the 2005 edition, which stunned fans, critics, and even the mighty EA with its incredible depth and $19.99 sticker price. Reportedly, EA management was so afraid of the series after its release that they actively pursued exclusivity in an effort to knock Take-Two out of the NFL running. According to one EA executive, “it scared the hell out of us.” While Take-Two did attempt another football title with All-Pro Football 2K8, which used retired NFL legends in place of current rosters, it never managed to retain the momentum the franchise had gained before EA locked in NFL exclusivity.

The NHL 2K series, which had been a staple of the Sega Sports line since the Dreamcast, was also another reason for EA to lock up some sort of exclusivity. It made two appearances on Sega’s last console in 2000 and 2002, and the 2005 edition retailed at the same $19.99 price NHL 2K5 did, resulting in a wide acceptance with casual hockey fans. EA soon obtained sole use of the ESPN brand, but Visual Concepts continued to publish its hockey games on a yearly basis and to great success. The line managed to maintain its momentum for almost another decade before finally being discontinued in 2011. In a post-earnings conference call, Take-Two COO Karl Slatoff confirmed the cancellation. “2K Sports once again does not plan to release a NHL title for consoles this year,” he stated, although no reason was given.

Alive in Spirit, If Not in Name

2K Sports was sold to Take-Two Interactive in 2005, effectively ending whatever remained of Sega Sports. Thanks to the exclusivity war being fought between Take-Two and EA, there is no longer any true competition in the different sports arenas, something many gamers miss. Many former Sega Sports alumni have since moved on to bigger and better things, but there is still a dedicated group of them working at companies like Sony and Take-Two who continue the legacy begun at Sega so long ago. The NBA 2K and MLB: The Show series are excellent examples of how the standards of quality and competition formed during the Sega Sports/EA rivalry continue the drive towards the most realistic and replayable sports titles possible, giving gamers a level of polish that many take for granted today.

In an age where console technology makes the creation of true-to-life sports titles seem almost elementary, it is important to remember that the developers behind Sega Sports were aspiring to bring those lifelike experiences home in spite of the severe limitations of the platforms on which they worked. That dedication to excellence blazed a trail of innovation and helped set the bar at a level that has become the standard in the industry. In that aspect at least, Sega Sports lives on.

Sega-16 would like to thank Dan Figueroa, Scott Lembrecht, Manny Granillo, and especially Diane Fornasier for their assistance with this article.

 

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