EA v MS: The XBOX LIVE Fight

[BCanr2d2]

The big thing at the moment seems to be the rumour that EA will not publish many of their yearly updated sports games on the XBOX console. It all seems to stem from their decision to try and get their own LIVE servers, rather than doing what MS has asked, and allowing MS to run it.
It looks like EA wanted to be able to remove the support for the superceded games on LIVE, and force the consumer to upgrade to the newest version, although this is only conjecture. Whilst they have only come to this decision recently, it is one that has been 2 or more years in the making. No doubt they would've had been given briefings on what LIVE was, and how it was setup before the console had been released.
EA seems stubborn enough to not give up on their current yearly updates for each game, which I doubt they would provide roster changes and uniform updates for. It would remove the main reason to buy their new games, which seem to only slightly change graphically from year to year.

They do distribute other games, from other developers that will support LIVE, but since they don't develop them, they can't really make the decision not to support LIVE on these games...


I know who will win, but are EA shooting themselves in the head, and not in the foot at this tactic?

[ET Warrior]

It angers me that they won't make nhl 2004 xbox live..because i LOVE the EA hockey games...:(

[git_sum_stuka]

I agree with you ET EA hockey games rock.

[ET Warrior]

Although I personally was upset with 2003, because it didn't have a shootout mode! I love playing shootouts with my friends...

I did like the way they improved the breakaway camera thing, it seems more natural in 03 than it did in 02

[git_sum_stuka]

I have nhl 2002 so Is 2003 better?

[ET Warrior]

Well, overall the gameplay is fairly similar, it's the breakaway mode camera thing that's different, instead of getting all red around the outsides it just kind of....blends...i dont know how to describe it, but i like it a lot better.

The goalies aren't quite as good in 03, but you can fix that by cranking up the difficulty to all-star...they're pretty good there.

The biggest upset is that there isn't shootout mode.....i LOVE playing shoot outs :(:mad:

[git_sum_stuka]

I love playing shootouts too ET:mad:

[Mex]

This isnt a hocky thread guys.

I hope that MS hosts the Xbox live servers.

[Toonces]

Originally posted by Captain wing
This isnt a hocky thread guys.

It's all good, it's Hockey related :D

I DO hope that MS and EA can work something out for the sake of the EA fans, but if not I'll be more than happy with NHL2k4! :D

[BCanr2d2]

I doubt they will, EA has been pig headed for 2 years, so why would they change now? Instead of milking money out of punters by giving slight updates every year, they should do a real good one every two or three years, with free roster updates for the game.

But to get EA to stop producing almost the same games every year and package it 200X is impossible. They just want to force users to have to buy the new game every year.......