Our company has developed a 3D soccer game which, in my opinion, is as good or better than EA and Gameloft's. It was developed for BREW and we want to sell it through Verizon via a publisher. However, a publisher just told me that Verizon only takes FIFA soccer games, and these all go through EA. I noticed that Verizon has both EA and non-EA football, golf, and baseball games, but when it comes to soccer, there is only EA's FIFA - Gameloft's product is absent. So ... what's the deal? Does Verizon have an exclusivity deal with FIFA?

Yes, they almost certainly have exclusive agreements.

Google for Verizon and FIFA and you'll observe several major joint ventures. Coupled with the lack of competing games, and the pattern is fairly clear.

Unfortunately it looks as if this particular route to market is closed to you. An effective (if unpleasant) example of the importance of "Business" in the development business. There is no point in developing a great game, unless you are sure that you have a route to market.

In your case I assume that there are enough other carriers/outlets to make it worthwhile.

Thanks for the confirmation. Unfortunately, this Chinese developer only hired me to find these things out -after- they completed the game, but, as Mr Marchant mentioned, all is not lost.

To that end, we're considering two options:

1) Pitch it to other CDMA carriers who use BREW. I believe Alltel and perhaps Sprint fit into this category, any more?

2) Pitch the game directly to EA, who could slap the FIFA label on it and sell it through Verizon. This is going under the assumption that a) EA does not develop the FIFA game itself but merely acts as a publisher, b) they don't have a long-term contract with said developer, and c) they think our game is better than the one their developer provides. This option is clearly a long-shot, can anyone fill in the blanks?

Fifa is indeed developed by a developer other than EA, unfortunatly for you the developer in question has been working alongside EA for a number of years and the chances of EA slapping a FIFA label on your game and selling it is nil.

You are going to have to go with somebody other than Verizon I'm afraid. There are many other carriers and many other soccar games Pro Evo, Playman Soccer etc. Try an alternative.

Quote: Original post by corbin niles
2) Pitch the game directly to EA, who could slap the FIFA label on it and sell it through Verizon. This is going under the assumption that a) EA does not develop the FIFA game itself but merely acts as a publisher, b) they don't have a long-term contract with said developer, and c) they think our game is better than the one their developer provides. This option is clearly a long-shot, can anyone fill in the blanks?

Afraid I agree with Buster on this one. EA has a long term strategy in place for its key franchises like FIFA. On the consoles they will not only be developing next years iteration but also the year after as well. On mobile they may not be working as far in advance but they certainly have a long term plan to cover as many handsets as possible and to do it at set intervals. This means that they have already made a considerable financial commitment to the current developer and they have established working relationship. They won't want to swap horses in mid stream (especially onto a horse they don't know) just because a game has some better features. For a company like EA business stability is actually more important. Pretty much the only reason they would swap was if their current development partner was seriously screwing up.

> Pitch the game directly to EA, who could slap the FIFA label
> on it and sell it through Verizon.

Unlikely for existing market segments. It's a good idea to talk to publishers anyway. They may have a hole in their coverage and you happen to have something completed already.

> they don't have a long-term contract with said developer

EA Mobile deals with a lot of contract developers. It's split along regions and platforms. Again, it's a good idea to talk to them to see if there is a market segment they don't yet cover (ex: high-end chineese 3G).

> they think our game is better than the one their developer provides.

I don't think EA would be sensitive to that argument. THQ Wireless or Glu? Maybe.

-cb