EA vs. Xbox Live

bigman2003 writes "In a big move earlier this year, EA started to offer games with Xbox Live support. One of the big concessions Microsoft made was to let outside companies run their own servers on Xbox Live. Today EA is having problems, partially brought on by their new title, Burnout 3." Tycho has commentary on the issue as well.

Comments

Yeah...

[Proud like a god]

But today it's all good again...

After playing a bit more Burnout online yesterday and not seeing any of the odd behaviors that enraged me so, I can now officially appreciate the fact that EA has put a game online for the Xbox. When their system was caddywompus, it made the fact that they persisted in using their own lobby system another offense in a long list. Now that it functions properly, I can see it as more of a doctrinal difference. We both agree that there is a God, for example, and we both believe that he embodies a certain suite of eternal characteristics - we're just trying agree on what he likes for breakfast

Re:Hmm.

[Osty]

But seriously. EA's servers shouldn't be causing problems with their games; they should just be a small drop in the pond of XBox Live servers...I'm not saying that's how it's implemented, I'm saying that's how it should be implemented.

The actual game portion of the game is not client/server, but peer-to-peer (all XBox Live! games are this way). The problem is with EA's matchmaking capabilities. Rather than using Microsoft's system that has been proven to work for nearly 2 years (more than 2 years, if you include the time XBox Live! spent in beta prior to the Nov. 2002 release), they wanted to use their own (ask PS2 owners, they'll tell you that EA's online play pretty much sucks). When playing an EA game on Live!, you're lulled into thinking you're on the Live! network by the login, but immediately after that you're shunted off to EA's crap. This means you run into things you'd never see on XBox Live!, like region-specific matchmaking (which could be a nice feature, but it shouldn't be the only way to make matches) and "technical" problems that never should have existed (for instance, you can't play an NTSC version of Burnout 3 against a PAL version of Burnout 3, which is just completely silly).

Chalk this up to growing pains with 3rd-party matchmaking over XBox Live!, but it never would've come about had EA swallowed their pride and used the proven system already in place.

Re:Sounds to me,

[DeadScreenSky]

Uh, EA has released at least two Xbox Live titles prior to this (their two football games). First one game out back in July. This is just standard EA ineptitude/laziness, and justification for exactly why MS originally required Xbox Live hosting to be done by them. A shame they surrendered to EA.

(Oh yeah, and Burnout 3 has a nice little warning on the back. EA can cancel all Live play with 30 days notice. Wonderful...thanks, EA!)