Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation?

Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?

Madden?

[the_skywise]

What about EA's sports franchise? Isn't that still a profit center for EA? Or is that losing money as well?

Just give up already.

[bluemeep]

They've tried generic fantasy ganes, generic sci-fi games and completely off-the-wall longshots. Only one of them even remotely pulls it's weight and that's because it's one of the major milestones of the industry. Just save us all a lot of grief and quit hemorrhaging money on MMOs already.

Hell, give up on online play completely. Throw some cash at a few promising single player games! They still exist, after all. All of these project cancellations have really hurt my already shaky opinion of EA -- to the point where I might just make a concious effort to avoid their titles. But if some of the developers under their wing can cook up something really outstanding with their full support (and negligable meddling), it'd go a long way towards turning that opinion around.

I'm sure there's a Madden Online joke in there somewhere...