Interview touching on EA's relationship with Microsoft.

[LynxFX]

Ed Fries interview at IGN.

IGN: Is the relationship between Microsft and Electronic Arts going to change anytime soon so that we might see some of their sports franchises on Xbox Live?

EF: We have a great relationship offline and we have a relationship that is under discussion as far as online goes. We continue to talk to them about that and obviously we'd love to have them on Xbox Live. What we won't do is compromise what Xbox Live is all about. There are some basic tenets of Live that every game supports voice, that you can find your friends wherever they are, you can invite them and you have one name that works anywhere. These are things that we're not going to compromise for any publisher no matter how big they are. So we need to find the right way to work together with them where we don't make sacrifices to the Live experience.

IGN: Is EA stuck on one of those issues in particular?

EF: The challenge that they have is that they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building this online side of EA. So far that's been a real business struggle for them. The great thing about Live for basically every other publisher in the world is that they can put their game online and not have to worry about hosting servers, doing billing around the world or this incredible infrastructure that we had to build. EA's in this awkward position where they've built their infrastructure and they want to be able to justify that investment, but you don't need any of that for Xbox Live. It puts them in a funny situation.

Now that is the biggest case of "I don't want to play with your ball" playground crap I've ever heard. I bet EA was expecting their online servers to be huge so they didn't even give Live a second look. Now that it is starting to fail (Sims Online for one) they are getting desperate to use their servers for something. I'm glad MS hasn't backed down or caved to EA and let them do whatever they want. One thing I would hate to see is Live turn into some service that is akin to the PS2 online network.

There is more stuff in the interview about E3 and future games. Mostly they just say "wait for E3". But they did say a Rare game is coming this year.

[ShannonX]

i think its hilarious.. they expected people to pay enourmous sums of money to play on their servers, and when it didn't happen, they got stuck in a crappy situation.

[DIGITAL]

ha ha thats sucks for EA

[RudedogX]

As you said Lynx, they don't feel like playing on someone else's court. F 'em. They're digging their own grave.

[MerimacHamwich]

I woulda liked to see Fries bash EA's horrible ports.

[Knight]

Originally posted by MerimacHamwich
I woulda liked to see Fries bash EA's horrible ports.

Dream on, He will never do that.

Want to know why? Because there's alot of people that like EA's sports games just like there boneheads that like aol.

[MerimacHamwich]

Unfortunately, I think you are right Knight.

[LynxFX]

Yeah I got the feeling that he was holding back as well. Too bad we couldn't get inside a room with just Microsoft and see what they really think of EA.

[MerimacHamwich]

Yeah, that could be very interesting.
Ed Fires - "They make worse games than my daily excrements!"

[Kraft]

So it turns out that by trying to save face to all the economic investors, EA has managed to really p*ss off a huge cross section of the gaming community... slick. I figured when they absorbed EA online into the main company fiscal system to disguise it's losses that they had pretty much given up on it. Why are they still being so friggin anal?

[Knight]

Originally posted by Kraft-XBA
So it turns out that by trying to save face to all the economic investors, EA has managed to really p*ss off a huge cross section of the gaming community... slick. I figured when they absorbed EA online into the main company fiscal system to disguise it's losses that they had pretty much given up on it. Why are they still being so friggin anal?

That's EA for you. That's why they are hated by alot of Gamers.

Microsoft should tell EA to goto hell when they want to make so XBL games.

[LynxFX]

Originally posted by Kraft-XBA
Why are they still being so friggin anal?

The million dollar question.

I've also noticed that they are churning out patches left and right for BF1942 on the PC. They have never done that for one of their games. Patches are pretty rare from EA (and not because of a lack of bugs). It took a couple months to get the first patch from EA and now we are seeing them every couple weeks. It really sounds to me like their developers don't have anything else to do right now, which brings back the question of why on earth would they cancel BF1942 for the Xbox? They obviously have/had the time and resources and I'm not buying that "We are concentrating on Road to Rome" line two weeks before it went gold.

[Knight]

Originally posted by Lynxfx-XBA
The million dollar question.

I've also noticed that they are churning out patches left and right for BF1942 on the PC. They have never done that for one of their games. Patches are pretty rare from EA (and not because of a lack of bugs). It took a couple months to get the first patch from EA and now we are seeing them every couple weeks. It really sounds to me like their developers don't have anything else to do right now, which brings back the question of why on earth would they cancel BF1942 for the Xbox? They obviously have/had the time and resources and I'm not buying that "We are concentrating on Road to Rome" line two weeks before it went gold.

That's only because the sales for the game are still very good, as soon sales drop off so will EA support for the game. Just look at Ultima9 it's still buggy as hell after the last patch, it's what other Game Company call a beta. It was so bad that they sent owners a new disc for the game with a copy of UO with a free month(the replacement disc for U9 was bad & not usably)

BF1942 is still in the top 10 sales of pc games each week at EB.

[Variation-XBA]

Instead of EA taking 1 step back (going with Live and not their servers), and then 2 steps forward (obviously sales)...they want 2 steps back and dont want to 'call it quits' basically.

Though even now cause of all this, I probably wont buy something thats EA...so...

[TheCovenant]

Originally posted by Lynxfx-XBA
The million dollar question.

I've also noticed that they are churning out patches left and right for BF1942 on the PC. They have never done that for one of their games. Patches are pretty rare from EA (and not because of a lack of bugs). It took a couple months to get the first patch from EA and now we are seeing them every couple weeks. It really sounds to me like their developers don't have anything else to do right now, which brings back the question of why on earth would they cancel BF1942 for the Xbox? They obviously have/had the time and resources and I'm not buying that "We are concentrating on Road to Rome" line two weeks before it went gold.

Yea, I didnt get that one either. what was the deal with that. "we have to put all our effort into adding this pixel over here......"

I mean seriously, even if you wanna put all your efforts into a game for a couple weeks, you dont cancel everything else.



EA sucks on testicles, and now we know why they are being babies. They want it their way or the high way. And between their way and the high way, im glad microsoft MADE them take the high way......

[Stormlord]

Originally posted by TheCovenant
Yea, I didnt get that one either. what was the deal with that. "we have to put all our effort into adding this pixel over here......"

I mean seriously, even if you wanna put all your efforts into a game for a couple weeks, you dont cancel everything else.



EA sucks on testicles, and now we know why they are being babies. They want it their way or the high way. And between their way and the high way, im glad microsoft MADE them take the high way......

PREACH ON BROTHA!