EA Close To Finally Announcing Xbox Live Support?

Thanks to IGN Xbox for its article discussing allegedly concrete plans for Electronic Arts to support Xbox Live later this year. According to the as yet unconfirmed article, EA "will announce its strategy at the annual Electronic Entertainment Exposition this May, but it may reveal plans earlier to investors this April 29, during its upcoming fiscal announcement." We previously reported on speculation that EA Sports titles would finally become Xbox online-playable, and IGN say that "Madden NFL 2005, NCAA College Football, NASCAR Thunder 2005, and NBA Live comprise the sports package for Xbox Live this fall." The non-sports titles seem a little more unclear, but it's claimed: "Battlefield: Modern Combat, EA's new GoldenEye game, and perhaps Burnout 3 are first in line for Xbox online compatibility."

Hot damn

[CaseM]

Wonderful news. It's a great time to be an XBox owner. What with many more cross-platform titles like the GTA3 series hitting the XBox (albeit some time ago), some stellar (if you believe the hype) RPG's coming up like Fable, and now this...

I love you Kalinga

[shione]

I remember that one of EA's dislikes about Xbox Live was the payment system. What have they worked out here?

MMKalinga

Re:I love you Kalinga

[shione]

Mod me down down for this if you like but another reason I heard why EA wouldn't go with Xbox live was that the games would be centrally run on MS servers, giving MS access to collecting data on who played what EA Sports games, how long etc. This would be dangerous information for a company like EA to allow one of it's main competitors to get its hands on. I guess that now that MS has quit their sports line up EA no longer sees the threat of having MS have access to this data... or money talks.

Re:I love you Kalinga

[toiletsalmon]

Microsoft has a new "policy" that allows 3rd party groups to run their own Live! servers. The ESPN people have already talked openly about doing just that. I think that was part of the "Tsumani" update that they made to the Xbox Live network on 4/21.

They probably had quite a bit of back-end restructuring to do to get this implemented. I don't see them needing 24 hours of downtime JUST to add more statistic/teamplay features. The MSN messenger "plugin" hasn't even gone online yet.

I will say this though, many people swear by the NBA Live and Madden franchises. To them, anything else is do-do. I'm not much of a sports gamer, but I see this as only a good thing for both companies and all I can say is "It's about time."

Additionally, with MS taking a year off with their NBA and NFL titles, it looks like SOMEBODY is going to have free reign on XBox Live as far as Basket/Foootball is concerned next year. Looks like a concession to lure EA onto their network if I ever saw one.

Re:I love you Kalinga

[Babbster]

It's not so much a "free ride" as long as Sega continues releasing their ESPN sports titles which are just about universally acknowledged (apart from the "fanboy" types) as being in a dead heat with the EA games in terms of quality.

Re:I love you Kalinga

[MMaestro]

Looks like a concession to lure EA onto their network if I ever saw one

All is fair in love and war? As long as the Xbox continues to be the (OTHER) underdog in the console war, they need to employ every trick they can to win over developers. This is no Nintendo, Sony, or Sega don't forget. No first-party games, no pre-established support, and no fanboyism (or they have anti-fanboyism). Other than superior hardware (which will be nulled in the next generation) and enough money to buy a small island and pay

Re:I love you Kalinga

[Mr. Darl McBride]

I remember that one of EA's dislikes about Xbox Live was the payment system. What have they worked out here?

MS agreed to can their own sports titles for a year in exchange for EA making the Xbox titles match the PS2 titles feature for feature. The PS2 titles being the better titles for EA's *massive* sports franchise has hurt Xbox sales considerably. This will rectify that.

Never thought you'd see a company that could make MS cry uncle, did ya.

Re:I love you Kalinga

[SuiteSisterMary]

How is this crying uncle? This is Microsoft making a sound tactical decision, and flipping off Sony in the process.

EA

[Sv-Manowar]

if you have the game need for speed underground or SSX 3, you will see the terrible functionality of the online gaming system they used on the ps2, i just hope that for the xbox they update it to be easier to use or have a better interface.

Re:EA

[blueZhift]

I must say that I haven't seen this because I've actually stayed away from EA sports games because I couldn't play them online on XBox. Well and the fact that I'm not that interested in EA's titles, except for NASCAR Thunder now that Papyrus is out of the picture.

But if their online system on the PS2 really is less than it should be, then I think getting connected with XBox Live will be a plus for them (and us) too. I know, I'll be getting NASCAR 2005 if I can play it on Live. I wonder if developer headaches with supporting their own online system may have helped drive them to settle their differences with Microsoft, and all of the money they were leaving on the table. In fact, it is likely that they had already saturated the available market with the online PS2 offerings, so going to XBox Live was the only way to further grow the market. Money talks very loudly!

Sweet...

[quecojones]

Hopefully, this means that the next NFS title will support online play on the XBox as well as on the PC/PS2. :)

Now we just need to add support for online play on the GC and make it support crossplatform gaming (for all of them and not just the PS2/PC).

Seriously, have a game that plays on all platforms that lets you play against players on any of the other platforms (or all of them at once) and maybe people can finally settle the whole "my console/system is better than yours" thing.

Re:Sweet...

[j.bellone]

Wouldn't work; remember a thing callex xbox-live. The only way they could do that is to only allow it on LAN hookup. I'm sure they wouldn't bother doing that anyway either. There are two games that I know of that have been "cross-platform" multiplayer - Quake 3 for the Dreamcast, and Final Fantasy XI on the PS2.

Re:Sweet...

[quecojones]

Don't forget Need for Speed: Underground for PS2 and PC...

I figure that if they can do it with a PS2 and a PC, they should be able to do it with an XBox and a PC... I'm not a programmer so I really don't know how hard it would be, but I figure that if they can get the game to run on each of the consoles plus the PC, they'd just need the server to handle stats/position data. Each copy of the game can do the rest locally like it does when playing in single player mode.

Then again, I probably just don't know

Re:Sweet...

[quecojones]

I guess that would be a problem, but I'm sure they could figure out ways around that... maybe in the next generation of hardware?

right

[tekunokurato]

I think it's probably taken so long because they know that cooperation with microsoft means microsoft puts other consoles right out of the running and gains leverage they will use against developers in the future (just like nintendo did back in the NES days).

Re:right

[MMaestro]

because they know that cooperation with microsoft means microsoft puts other consoles right out of the running and gains leverage they will use against developers in the future

What you mean like Sony did with Sega and is trying to do with Nintendo? Look at it this way...

because they know that cooperation with Sony means Sony puts other consoles right out of the running and gains leverage they will use against developers in the future