January 24^th, 2005 (1:23pm) - The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., co-publisher of Visual Concepts’ 2004 line-up of sports games, has entered an exclusive agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) to publish future baseball videogames, starting next year, that will include real life players. Take-Two has also been in negotiations to acquire the rights to use team names and other assets, however, the outcome of these discussions have not yet been revealed.

This agreement prevents third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts (EA) from using real-life player names in their baseball videogames (if they were to even pursue developing one), although this agreement will still allow hardware manufactures such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to publish their own baseball videogames. In essence this agreement gives Take-Two exclusive third-party publishing rights.

A spokesman for EA, of Redwood City, Calif., said Take-Two’s deal appear to be pricey because it still allows competition from console makers. "If that’s the agreement, it’s not exclusive -- it simply excludes EA and lets several other publishers make MLB baseball games," said the spokesman, Jeff Brown.

The official announcement of this agreement is expected this week and is rumored to be a seven-year agreement which has Take-Two paying a licensing fee of $80 million to $90 million to the MLB Players Association.