EA rubs Microsoft’s nose in it

Following what was reported to be quite a severe bust-up over revenue splits for Xbox Live subscriptions, Electronic Arts walked away from supporting Microsoft’s seminal online gaming offering Xbox Live, opting to exclusively support the PlayStation 2 online gaming push instead.

It was thought that after the first year or so, EA would relent and find someway of working with the XBL subs model. Well, apparently not, with the announcement today that the next four online EA games will be exclusive to PlayStation 2.

The games named are The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Sims Bustin' Out, Need for Speed: Underground, and Medal of Honor: Rising Sun.

LOTR will see online two-player co-operative play, complete with a buddy and random pairing system, with The Sims seeing similar functionality.

Medal of Honor wil support eight-player multiplayer with full-voice support - a serious game in the shooter-hungry US online gaming market.

And Need for Speed will see four-player real-time racing. Not ground-breaking, but better than nothing.

We’ll try and gauge Microsoft’s reaction to all this when we sit down with Xbox top brass at X03. Stay tuned for updates soon.