EA may drop many sports titles for the PC

PC News | Madden 09 is the first to go.

With a large number of gamers playing their favourite sports titles on their console of choice, Electronic Arts is looking to discontinue some of their big sporting game franchises - starting with the granddaddy of all sports games - the Madden football series.

While Madden 09 will definitely not make an appearance on PC this year, comments on the official blog of Peter Moore, President of EA Sports, have indicated that more of our beloved sports games such as FIFA, NBA Live and NHL might also miss out on PC releases.

Moore comments that “the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those."

Exactly what plans do EA have to 'revitalise' the sports game on PC? What titles will be making the cut? Looks like all you PC sports gamers better invest in a console if you don't already have one.

PALGN will continue to follow this story as it develops.

Related Content

Mass Effect coming to the PC in May
13 Feb, 2008 Something just about anyone could have guessed.

2K Australia talks about BioShock experiences
21 Nov, 2007 2K Australia on BioShock's development.

Epic: PC Gears of War is "no great secret"
15 Feb, 2007 They just need to get around to it.

7 Comments

mipac

4 years ago

Mipac's prediction: the majority of EA games will be released for free within the next 24 months, relying on microtransactions to counter piracy (ala Battlefield Heroes). Madden 10 (does that sound weird to anyone else?) will probably be a free/reduced price.

Don't fret PC users, you still have Starcraft 2, which instantly makes the PC the platform of choice for 2008

Scoop

4 years ago

mipac wrote

Madden 10 (does that sound weird to anyone else?)

Sounds awesome if ya ask me

This doesnt affect me in any way, not being a PC gamer. But there will be plenty of NBA Live fans for the PC who will be outraged...

ZNMS

4 years ago

Quote

The PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

Playing sport titles on a PC never felt right for me. I guess, I'm not the only one who thinks that way.

Passa

4 years ago

Never owning a console as a child, I grew up with the PC versions of FIFA so I find this news rather sad. But the lack of sales for these PC ports is simply because they're so bad. I still can't get FIFA 08 running at all on my system and the NHL 07 demo only had a 800x600 resolution setting..

killer1500

4 years ago

So what there saying is pretty much everything except Tiger Woods will be dropped, because that seems the only PC friendly EA sports game.

Annihilation

4 years ago

the graphics of the last 2 NBA games have been appalling vs their console counterpart, even the back of the box looks like it is having trouble contending with the PlayStation One =\

Lord Haart

4 years ago

Meh. Some may point this out as being a step towards the death of PC gaming.

Me, I think it's just a golden step towards freeing the PC of the scummiest of scum.

I mean, what are we really missing out on? A chance to play a soccer game where you always lose online if you don't pay EA $5 to get access to better in-game sports players?

<insert BF: Bad Company reference here... oh, wait.

>

----edit----
Just because rereading my comments made me realise I sound like I'm spouting that bandwagon jargon like any anti-fanboi, I thought I should qualify my statements:

While I would generally feel bad about PC games losing a genre, the fact is that this also opens up the market for newer, more innovative games from other companies, who were unable to enter it before because kids would default to playing Madden 52346. Whether you think that EA makes good games or not isn't the point; the fact is that releasing a new game every year is just draining the dam dry, and consumers shouldn't have to deal with that as the Status Quo. If it IS the stats quo, then the result is a dreary, non-risk-taking market, and to me that seems to be what's happened with sports games. When was the last time a genre-defining game was released in sports? When I play games like FIFA, I tend to just feel like the newer games are simply overgrown patched versions of the old ones.

Now once technologies like Euphoria enter the scene, we may see a real reason for Joey-joe-joe-junior-Shabadoo to spend his hard earned cash on a new Sports game. But the PC sports market has become stagnant, so an event like this is actually a very positive thing, as it creates a vacuum that countless game developers can fill. There IS money in it, but I guess consumers have grown tired of EA releasing the same game over and over, and therefore the money just isn't available to EA. All that needs to happen now is for someone else to step up to the plate.