For the curious and sleuthing mind, there was certainly a lot of intrigue as to who was missing from the PlayStation 4 launch event last week in New York City. Where, exactly was Electronic Arts?
Today it appears a bit more is being answered on that question, as it appears EA and Microsoft are
cozying up with each other in the form of an exclusive arrangement. The announcement of any such deal would be held at the XBox 720 reveal event, which looks to potentially take place on April 26.
EA is certainly a heavyweight third party publisher, so it's possible the arrangement could be a first-dibs type of deal, where games from EA come to the Xbox 720 first before releasing on other consoles later. Such a deal could also mean exclusive DLC to the XBox platform or perhaps an exclusive title or two.
How a rumored EA/Microsoft partnership affects the sports titles is relatively unknown. As we saw with MLB this year, sports leagues want a presence on all of the major platforms. It's doubtful, for instance, that the NFL would allow EA to only release Madden on the XBox 720 for a few months before it appeared on the PS4. Most likely, the deal will be a limited exclusivity deal with some titles but not all. It remains unlikely EA Sports will find itself only publishing on Microsoft's console in the future.
EA's CFO Blake Jorgenson had this to say
about the PlayStation 4 a few days ago, "At the end of the day we are very excited about Sony's platform. We feel there's a huge opportunity there. The technical power on the platform is going to allow us to do a substantial amount of things that have never been done before."
What do you all think of EA and Microsoft cozying up to one another? Do you think this affects the sports titles in any way?