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[Hudo]

Sony had its own sport simulations line at the time (NFL GameDay was a serious treat to Madden in 1997 and 1998*) so certainly isn't the presence of sport simulations in the first-party lineup the real reason of the rift between EA and Sega.
Simply EA has a history of bullying who is weaker than them both to exclude rivals from really compete with their sport games (by splashing more money for the licenses) and to trying to pilot platform holder to decisions who favor them (by leveraging their status as the biggest third-party publisher on the planet).
Sega by that time was a very weak platfom holder and I'm sure EA management thought it woud be easy to wrestle control from them.
In case it back fired they were sure Sega wouldn't be a serious contender to Sony and Nintendo for which they would still continue to produce games for.

EA already took Sega by the balls with the infamous Joe Montana Football deal and by forcing a better license deal to develop for the Mega Drive:
Sega approached Electronic Arts, developer of the Madden NFL series, and president Trip Hawkins, for help, suggesting that he cancel the upcoming Genesis version of Madden in order to work on the game. Hawkins agreed to help Sega but refused to cancel his company's game instead working on both projects. He intentionally made Montana a worse game than Madden, starting with the basic code for the former he removed the 3D field as well as cut down the number of plays from 113 to 100. According to Michael Knox a programmer on the game, most of the deliberate downgrading occurred after the company had already completed the game. Joe Montana Football missed the Christmas deadline and was released in January 1991, shortly after the Genesis version of John Madden Football.


I'm pretty sure there is some kind of undercover beef between EA and Nintendo since the early 3DS/WiiU days, the difference is that EA has no chance to bully Nintendo which is stronger than them.
NSW sales in US are trending toward it becoming the second best selling cosole in US history yet no Madden game has appeared on it lol.

EDIT:
* Top 20 best selling games in US for each year between 1995 and 2000 (source: NPD):

First-party published titles highlighted.

Man, thank you so very much for this small "history lesson"! Interesting stuff! I didn't know EA were so aggressive when it came to their sports stuff (but it's not surprising).

 

[Markio128]

PES (or International Superstar Soccer) on SNES was awesome even before it released on PS. Me and a few mates used to play it all the time. We even had a trophy to take home haha.

Before then, it was Sensible Soccer on the Amiga.

I haven’t enjoyed a football game so much since either of those 2, at least not with friends.

But more on topic - Fifa was pretty lacklustre around that time, so I’m not surprised Sony gave it a wide birth.

 

[kuncol02]

Pro Evolution 5 was the peak of football.

I last played FIFA 2017 [I think or was it 2018] that came free with my PS4 Pro RDR2 bundle. I'd rather pay a tenner to play the PES5 classic than play any new one. I was an awkward cunt with West Midlands City. Heskey & Clinton Morrison bay-bee!!!

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 was peak football.

 

[SkylineRKR]

The FIFA license means absolutely nothing. It doesn't have power over any clubs or nation squads. I think EA FC will do fine once people are used to the new name. I believe it has 11 million players right now. It will probably do fine. It saves EA reportedly 150 million on license fees so I figure EA FC will make more money assuredly.

FIFA overestimated itself. Sure, they can shop their license around now but who wants it? No other party has a decent amount of clubs and teams under license to make a worthwhile game out of it. Its telling that there isn't any news from FIFA yet. They're going to miss out.

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 was peak football.

It was a great game at launch, the Song 2 and the rest of the OST like Crystal Method. A staggering amount of teams, I think all countries were in. You could do any regional WC qualification. And you could play the world cup itself, but with different qualified teams. We played this game a sickening amount of times. The atmosphere with the stadium cutscenes were great too.

But it was a shit game on gameplay level. Too easy to score, very dumb defending. The gameplay was really mediocre when compared to ISS Pro 98. But RTWC is probably my fave FIFA game ever for nostalgia reasons. I've never enjoyed a FIFA game this much again, though FIFA 14 on PS4 felt really great to me and is probably my second best.

 

[Mephisto40]

Pro Evo was the better game at the time in every way imaginable so it's no surprise

 

[K' Dash]

Pro Evolution Soccer and Winning Eleven ran laps around FIFA at the time. Can't blame them.