Slashdot Mirror
EA Cites MS Bullying, Says No Xbox Online Games
beggs writes: "It appears that Electronic Arts will not have any games for the new Xbox online service Microsoft is rolling out this week. In this article over at the Times, people close to the negotiations for the service say that Microsoft was "trying to force software publishers to offer their online games on data-serving computers controlled by Microsoft, a move that could potentially give Microsoft access to information about customers." In the end EA said it will work with Sony and the PS2 online service."
And there we were wondering why Microsoft were so prepared to back down and close their Hailstorm division. Who wants to bet that a good deal of the technology they were researching there shows up in their future gaming plans?
A little planning goes a long way...
Is there any online games that are going to be MS only? I know PSO is coming to all platforms, and I doubt EQ (owned by Sony) will be on MS at all. Is there any killer online app for Xbox? I don't expect MS to launch this service without something special backing it up, but I haven't heard what that would be yet.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Don't let anyone get between you and your customers. Microsoft and EA both know this.
The fact that Sega and EA couldn't be friends is, IMO, one of the reasons the Dreamcast got killed. Don't underestimate the power of EA Sports's games (which are re-released with minor improvements every year, so sales for their "series" are always huge) and the multitude of developers that EA publishes for. This *could* mean trouble for M$. Sure, they're only mentioning online play but what's Slashdot without a little extrapolation?
set mode(Nelson(Simpsons)==true)
point finger at Micro$oft.
Hah-Hah!
if (ThisArticle.about()==Gaming) {
Sony.opinion(like);
Microsoft.opinion(hate);
}
elseif (ThisArticle.about()==Music) {
Sony.opinion(hate);
Microsoft.opinion(neutral);
}
else {
Sony.opinion(like);
Microsoft.opinion(hate);
}
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
It seems to me like everytime a major game company gets pissed off with their platform manufacturer they go to sony.
The good folks in Redmond just don't see, that you can apply bullying tactics only where you have a monoploy. They definitely don't have one in the console market (yet) and they desperately need partners here to ever be successful.
The problem nowadays is probably that Microsoft id a wholly untrustworthy company to partner with. Just ask all the companies that received the kiss of death.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Why does Slashdot always link to NY Times, a subscription site? I don't subscribe, so can't read it. A quick search on Google News is all it takes to throw up other links about this story:
Reuters
Reuters
Does Slashdot have a deal with NY Times?
Uh, don't all the geeks who would play these already have PCs? Why would they need an Xbox? And if you think playing an FPS without a mouse is hard, try playing an RTS like AoE without one.
It's this kind of thinking on the part of MS management and Xbox advocates that will kill the system. Yes, Xbox is easy to port PC games from. However, those same PC games were not designed for a console. They were not designed for a console controller, and they were not designed for TV screen resolutions. Yet by most accounts, they will make up the bulk of the Xbox library. Yes, console gamers will love getting PC games they've always wanted to play but could not afford a PC to do so. But they will hate the poor gaming experience of playing them on a platform not suited for them.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
From the NYT Article:
"Microsoft executives said yesterday that they believed that they would be able to convince Electronic Arts that the Xbox online service would not constitute a threat to the customer base of Electronic Arts."
This sounds like the old "We'll make them an offer they can't refuse" from the 'Godfather' movies.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
The stakes these companies are playing for are quite huge.
Whoever wins will be the FIFA/IOC (substitute world governing body of your choice) of the gaming industry.
win2k, linux... who cares. What will emerge is an online gaming platform (think direct x or OS of your choice) that games will eventually standardise on.
Whoever controls those servers, that platform will make the windoze licence to print money look like a game of monopoly. We are talking big bucks (tm) here.
My take, keep the OS/gaming platform open.
!!go bnetd go!!
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
Of course, with all the PK (player killers) in online FPS, you'd have a very tough ride.
Let's say a football game: the quarterback chooses the play (is he alone to choose, or the rest of the team can have an input too?), everybody lines up... and before the play is started, that moron on the left gets another penalty for encroachment, doubled by a major fault on the QB. Sure you can kick him out, but the damage's still done.
Also, seems very fun to play as an offensive guard...
Another example, featuring "real" football (soccer): the PK gets to control a very good defenseman. He tackles by behind a few times (maybe injuring an opposing player in the process), and the AI referee finally redcards the player. PK gone, but he leaves his team 10 to 11!
Again, very fun it is to control a player not part of the action... Who to be goalie wants and the game watch from 100 yards away? (bad attempt at Yoda speak)
At least in real sports, you have some practices between the games, so there's no incentive for a moron to act funny in games, as he has to act correctly in practices. Or if he does act funny in games, at least you can kick him (for real)...
and Sega's sports games... absolutely KILL EA's sports series.
While you may believe this, I believe this is actually what killed the Dreamcast. People have grown up with EA's sports title. NHL Hockey and Madden Football are probably the two most notables. I know quite a few people that were getting Madden when they first got their PS2 and Game Cube. If the online versions start to take off (and they most likely will), coupled with the lack of triple-A titles for the XBox, these could be the key ingredients in the death of the Microsoft console business.
The irony with Microsoft is that if they were less amenable to dirty tricks and actually showed some respect towards partners and customers they would be a much more popular company and possibly would not even be in court now.
On the other hand they would probably never have become the huge monopoly that they are if they didn't resort to dirty tricks.
This control freak syndrome exhibited by Microsoft in the EA story is so typical of Microsoft it seems not even worth mentioning or replying to. Although EA is no angel, it does give one a sort of evil satisfaction somewhere that Microsoft doesn't always win in their Everquest(;)) to win domination of the world.
Just a wild day dream before the morning coffee kicks in.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Check out the latest version of Half-Life/Counter-strike. This has a spectator (HLTV) mode with very cool features. You can follow people around, see what they are seeing, look at a dynamic map of the arena, or just move your camera anywhere you like. They have used it to broadcast title matches to the internet and it appears to work well.
One of the best $30 I ever spent.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
Sorry to post again just after my other post but I forgot to add what is perhaps the most striking thing about this story: The fact that EA publicly informed the press of Microsoft's attempt's to control the server side of the equation. While it obvious why Microsoft is doing this - a public posing platform for it's hailstorm and .Net strategy , which hasn't been so successful as of late - it is fairly rare that anyone who has business dealings with Microsoft has the courage to go public about it. A lot of companies have simply been too frightened of Microsoft retaliation. I know that EA is far less dependant on Microsoft than most software companies, which perhaps explains the move, but given the current wave of shedding light on Microsoft's practices, it seems that it is a good method to avoid Microsoft retaliating, since Microsoft has had an enormous amount of bad press lately, is publicity shy when it comes to having it's dealings exposed and knows full well that negative news events like this *do* affect both other game developers who feel strengthened in their dealings with MS and the general public who normally doesn't care much whether Microsoft is a monopoly or not but defintely does react when seeing negative news about a company in the mainstream media (i.e."I don't think I'll go for an XBox, no one makes games for it" sort of thing).
EA is to games what MS is to operating systems. Most are crap, you have a new version every year (that looks just like last year's, with slightly differennt menus), but they control the market. Like MS, they buy out the competition just to kill them (ex., Origin, Bullfrog, etc.) and release their products based on commercial reasons, whether the software is finished or not.
In other words, they could be long lost brothers, or perhaps clones that grew up in different towns.
That said, this is a major blow for MS. EA controls a lot of games and a lot of different studios, and the X-Box's problem is precisely the lack of software. This may force MS to "speed up" the development of their games, possibly falling into the same traps as EA often does (buggy, unbalanced, unfinished games). And if PC gamers are fairly forgiving of that, console games expect the games to work right the first time.
This could be an opportunity for Infogrames, but I don't think they get along with MS very well, either (does anyone?).
RMN
~~~
A company shows some integrity by trying to protect it's customers and you ask "why should they care"? The appropriate response should be "thank you!". We complain every day about companies that don't respect their customers, and run said companies with apparent abandon, only eyeing the almighty dollar as the goal. That's contagious and habit forming. The next concession to the companies integrity is that much easier and the customer is the one that ultimately pays the price. It's decisions like this one by Sony that move to gain the respect of their customers. That's the best business move you can make, and will garner more of that dollar goal in the long term from those customers.
The more you tighten your grip, the more companies will slip through your fingers.
Looks like this is, finally, starting to happen to Microsoft.
I make a habit of reading Yahoo!'s Reuters provided news spools before hitting Slashdot each morning. I saw the same article there -- but there was no mention whatsoever of WHY Electronic Arts was turning down Microsoft.
Then here we have the NYT article and it's got not just one but multiple quotes slamming Microsoft's policy regarding online game servers. I wonder why one media source covered that angle and others didn't?
Of course, since I don't wanna scream conspiracy without screaming it from two directions, it could either be because Microsoft leaned on Rueters not to report that bit, or because NYT was digging for any dirt they could blow out of proportion in order to make it look like they were scooping their rivals. Who knows?
Either way, consolidating servers like Microsoft is proposing is the same My Way Or The Highway tactics that nearly crushed Nintendo in the last generation of the console wars. Guess they didn't learn.
Don't underestimate the power of EA Sports's games (which are re-released with minor improvements every year, so sales for their "series" are always huge) and the multitude of developers that EA publishes for. This *could* mean trouble for M$.
Which is ironic, because Microsoft's own OS development follows almost exactly the same strategy.
I can feel the karma burn coming on, but I don't care. While I have dutifully read through all the posts, no one seems to have truly pointed out why MS and EA would be in disagreement on this issue. No, it's not "obvious" that MS is just doing this to plug Hailstorm and My Services - I think MS got a pretty clear message that companies are not interested in storing their private data on MS's servers given their track record on security.
However, for anyone that has followed MS's Xbox online vision, the reason why they want everyone on the same servers is clear. One of the biggest selling points of the service (since getting ahead in a highly competitive field like games is all about differentiation) is that users will be able to switch between games on the fly if they already own those games. So I'm playing Halo, someone on my buddy list signs on and wants to play Tony Hawk, and I can get notified of it while playing Halo.
While I can see that scheme happening with servers being hosted by different companies simply by using a common protocol of some sort, I would think that this would be very difficult to implement when you're talking about many vendors and many hosting facilities. I think MS wants to really control the positive user experience on the Xbox and they know that if EA's servers suck, people (including most of us on here) are going to blame MS, not the actual game vendor.
A secondary reason is combined billing. I'm not sure if I'm in the minority, but I've never paid for an online game, I think it's a waste of money. If I already paid $50 for a game, I don't want to pay $10 each month to keep playing it. Diablo, etc. which were playable online for free were always a much better choice for me. Yet I'm considering Xbox Live (online service) when it gets started. Why? B/c I think this sounds like a better deal, where I'm going to be able to pay a flat fee for multiple games that I can play online, instead of $10/month to this company, $15 to another, and so on. Now sure that means that my billing information belongs to one place, MS, and that will potentially worry me. But I think I'd rather have one company to worry about, once again, than 5 different ones all having my credit card number. But that's just me.
EA might not be happy with that idea, and wants to get its own monthly fee, but of course publicly they're going to say that they're just out to protect their customer's data. In reality, it's just business I think, let's not jus take sides automatically.
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The real story is that MS wants to charge a fixed fee to customers, $10/month for access to all the online games. EA on the other hand wants to charge a monthly fee per game and they also want to have the users use there own online services. So no thanks, I've been boycotting EA since March. I bought the NHL 2002 last october, and guess what? There online service hardly ever works. It's slow, it crashes and when you do get in, you won't find many people to play with because they have already given up on it. I've been able to play like 4 matches online since october. You get the idea.
And there support, oh boy don't get me started on that one.