Xbox Live Server Protocol Opens Sports To Sega, EA?

Thanks to IGN Sports for its interview with Visual Concepts boss Greg Thomas regarding Sega and EA's entries in the Xbox sports game market. Thomas, whose Sega-owned company produces the ESPN Sports series, reveals of the Xbox versions: "Last year we had to be in [Microsoft's] closed network. This year, they're introducing something called LSP (Live Server Protocol) that enables us to run our own servers." Following Microsoft's cancellation of its 2004 XSN Sports line-up for Xbox, he muses on Electronic Arts' possible, long-delayed adoption of Xbox Live for sports titles, noting that LSP "...allows you to use your own servers. So if that was EA's problem, then they can definitely be on Xbox Live this year. But if they had a different problem, a billing issue or a revenue concern, then that hasn't changed." He ends by predicting of EA: "we're clearly expecting them to be on Xbox Live by the end of the year."

Comments

I really hope so.

[Lemental]

Having just two football games, one sucking, the other being really awesome, is bad for competition. ESPN has owned this segment of the Xbox market for a year now, and maybe we will finally get to see some REAL innovation in these titles in the future.

EA may be a big behemoth, but, they have real talent in spots, and, I hate to see that talent confined to one system, or, one online service for that for one system.

God MS are smart - even if it takes them a while

[sien]

So, MS realise that EA will not be part of XBox live. OK, they say, we made a mistake, we will deal with it.

Add to that Xna, where MS turns the 40% of the game market they control ( 30% PC 10% Xbox ) and you wonder how long before they bury Sony.

Scary really.

He's probably wrong.

[fondue]

"we're clearly expecting them to be on Xbox Live by the end of the year"

EA have made no announcement regarding LSP.

Visual Concepts have signed a potentially lucrative deal with MS to continue supporting Xbox Live. So Greg Thomas is hardly going to say 'no, the Live revenue model is still completely unworkable for EA and all the other major publishers, but on the other hand we're getting our asses kicked by EA on the PS2 and we're really, really desperate.'

The changes made by LSP don't address the fundamental problems with how Xbox Live is organised and run.

Open Live Servers

[HuggybearVT]

Doesn't this just open the door to Open Source Xbox Live servers, a la Battle.net? It seems that this would be a very popular hack. Methinks that's why MS wanted to keep control of the closed protocol.