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EA's Plans for Xbox 2
GamesIndustry.biz has news of EA's Xbox 2 plans for 2005, adding additional weight to the likelyhood of a new console by the end of the year. Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously on Slashdot and seems to pit Microsoft's new console against the old one for sales dollars.
"Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously on Slashdot and seems to pit Microsoft's new console against the old one for sales dollars."
Maybe not. You can actually get a copy of Madden 2005 for the original Playstation, even though PS2 is backwards compatable. I would imagine that EA is betting that there will still be a signifigant portion of XBox owners who will not own an XBox2 any time soon and they'd like to continue to make money off of XBox owners.
Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously
That seems to me more like a strategy to deal with the lack of forwards compatability of the original Xbox. For the same reason, EA still develops their new titles for the original Playstation and for the PS2.
Most of the EA Sports line was still being released on PS1 up until a year ago or so. There's nothing "odd" about it. EA would be stupid to disregard the huge pre-install base and solely pursue the new console owners. Likewise, EA would be stupid to just release an XBox version and say "use your backward compatibility" to XBox2 owners. Those with new consoles will want games that actually push their hardware.
Gradually the previous generation's support will diminish, just like the PS1 games gradually became little more than roster updates and had no new-feature-similarity to their PS2 cousins.
Exactly. That's probably one of the dumbest statements I've read in the teasers. The real reason they're going to make new games for both Xbox and Xbox 2 is that, (here's a shocker) not everyone is going to buy an Xbox 2 at launch. Imagine that! The thing'll probably be $300-400 at launch, possibly more if they think they can get away with it, and I know I'm not going to buy it untill a couple of price drops happen.
Sounds just like what the xbox was missing.
In the console market, Microsoft needs EA more than EA needs Microsoft.