ESPN Integration is an agreement between ESPN

ESPN

Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

 and video game developer EA

Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...

 to put various ESPN features in EA Sports

EA Sports

EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...

 games. The first game to feature ESPN Integration was the college baseball

College baseball

College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. Compared to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a less significant contribution to cultivating professional players, as the minor leagues primarily...

 game MVP 06 NCAA Baseball. 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

ESPN Radio is an American sports radio network. It was launched on January 1, 1992 under the original banner of "SportsRadio ESPN." ESPN Radio is located at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut...

, 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

Sega

, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...

. Their ESPN NFL 2K5

ESPN NFL 2K5

ESPN NFL 2K5 is an American football video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K Sports and the Sega Corporation. It is a part of the NFL 2K series. The game was originally released on July 20, 2004, for both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox video game consoles.- Features :The game...

 game featured total ESPN integration, complete with authentic music, graphics, rendered sets, pre-half-and post game commentary by Chris Berman, and Sunday Night Football

Sunday Night Football

Sunday Night Football is a weekly American football game held throughout most of the season by the National Football League. Sunday night games have been played regularly since 1987 and have thus far aired on three different television outlets:...

 telecast crew. That along with innovations in gameplay cut into EA Sports dominant Madden NFL

Madden NFL

Madden NFL is an American football video game series developed by Electronic Arts Tiburon for EA Sports. The game series is named after Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden, a well-known former Super Bowl-winning coach of the Oakland Raiders and color commentator...

 franchise, leading EA to sign an exclusive deal with the NFL.

External links

• Interview about ESPN Integration on IGN
  IGN
  IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...