ESPN Integration is an agreement between

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

and

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developer

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

to put various ESPN features in

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" ...

games. The first game to feature ESPN Integration was the

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

game ''

MVP 06 NCAA Baseball ''MVP 06: NCAA Baseball'' is the fourth edition of the baseball video game series developed by Electronic Arts. Because of Electronic Arts' loss of the Major League Baseball (MLB) license to Take Two Interactive in 2005, which now has the exclus ...

''. The features that have so far appeared include a streaming ticker at the bottom of the screen with real up to date sports scores, just as it appears on the ESPN channel. This ticker does not just crawl during menus and load screens but also in actual gameplay. Another feature is the ability to listen to sports updates from

ESPN Radio ESPN Radio, which is alternately platform-agnostically branded as ESPN Audio, is an American sports radio network and extension of the ESPN television network. It was launched on January 1, 1992, under the original banner of "SportsRadio ESPN". ...

, and a third feature is being able to read the top 40 sports stories from ESPN.com. Much of this deal was done on the part of EA Sports to prevent ESPN from selling its brand name to another game manufacturer, like they did with

SEGA is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

. Their ''

ESPN NFL 2K5 ''ESPN NFL 2K5'' is an American football video game developed by Visual Concepts for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. Published by 2K Sports and the Sega Corporation, it is the sixth installment of the '' NFL 2K series'' and the last to use ...

'' game featured total ESPN integration, complete with authentic music, graphics, rendered sets, pre-half-and post game commentary by

Chris Berman Christopher James Berman (born May 10, 1955), nicknamed "Boomer", is an American sportscaster. He has been an anchor for '' SportsCenter'' on ESPN since 1979, joining a month after its initial launch, and hosted the network's '' Sunday NFL Coun ...

, and Sunday Night Football telecast crew. That along with innovations in gameplay cut into EA Sports dominant

Madden NFL ''Madden NFL'' (known as ''John Madden Football'' until 1993) is an American football video game series developed by EA Tiburon for EA Sports. It is named after Pro Football Hall of Fame coach and commentator John Madden and sold more than 130 m ...

franchise, leading EA to sign an exclusive deal with the

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

References

External links

Interview about ESPN Integration
on

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

Integration Integration may refer to: Biology *Multisensory integration *Path integration * Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome *DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...

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