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."

Comments

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

[SuiteSisterMary]

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