Sony Launches Online Sports Game Portal

Thanks to CNET News for their article discussing Sony's attempts to attract PS2 online sports players with a new portal. According to the site: "The new version of 989SportsOnline.com is set to launch Aug. 26 to coincide with the release of the football game 'NFL GameDay 2004'. The online service will feature message boards, tournaments, downloadable rosters and player rankings, and will let people who use a PS2 headset conduct voice chats." This further muddies the waters for online sports players, as "Electronic Arts, the independent publisher that dominates sports gaming, is putting all its online sports titles on the PS2 this year... EA has refused thus far to support Xbox Live for its sports games, citing concerns about the business model. Microsoft has its own sports lineup, XSN Sports, that also offers online play and lets people access message boards and player rankings." Which platform/online sports service is going to come out on top?

Comments

Re:Sony's setting up there pieces

[PainKilleR-CE]

If sony plays this right, esp. with future support from EA's sports line.

You must've misread something:
Sony's service and EA's service are totally seperate. Even though the PS2 is the only console EA is supporting, the service Sony is launching is only for their 980 sports line, and won't support EA's games.

EA won't farm out their multiplayer to any other company unless they can get a lot of customer data at a lower cost than they have when hosting it themselves, so you're not likely to see them working with anyone else's service any time soon. The fact that MS requires anyone offering online play to use Live just means that EA's games will never be online on the XBox (because MS won't give EA customer data, and if you see EA games on Live at some point in the future, it means that MS gave in and gave them this data, or EA's had a complete change of heart somewhere about selling customer information).

Can you read?

[drewmca]

Um, are you people drunk or just incapable of reading? Their network is for 989 games. The reason EA doesn't support xbox live yet is because they built their own network up and want to get something from it. The article mentions that. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT EA'S GAMES ARE PLAYABLE ON SONY'S NETWORK! They won't support it (yet) for the same reason they won't support xbox live. They have their own network and are big enough to force people to use it.
Quite frankly, Sony's network sounds like despite everything they said before about xbox live, they like the model. Some of the posters here do, too, judging from the "online voice will be the killer app" comment. That's been around for a year now on xbox.
People need to stop getting off so much when "their" system is perceived to be better than all of the other "crap" systems. One system is as good as another, or you may prefer one based on your own taste in games. The fact is, with 3 console makers pushing each other, we're all going to end up seeing better games and better features.