Electronic Arts Throws Weight Behind PSP – Cautious Over Nintendo DS
Royalties issues to blame as publishing giant mulls over options.
EA's Madden series is sure to appear on PSP - but what about NDS?
Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst has shed some light on the company’s future handheld gaming plans, in news that might well serve as a wake-up call to Nintendo.
According to Probst, EA has between 8 and 12 titles at some stage of development for Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Portable (PSP). What’s more, he states that all the games will be released before April 2005, a huge portfolio for an untested machine.
Probst went on to state that Electronic Arts currently believes that the PSP will hit retail in late November and will sell for between $199 and $249.
However, Electronic Arts has not yet made any development or publishing decisions regarding Nintendo’s recently announced Nintendo Dual Screen (NDS). It is thought that EA is currently negotiating with Nintendo over the royalty charges the Kyoto giant will demand for the upcoming handheld. It is a well-known fact that EA has long bemoaned Nintendo’s prohibitive Game Boy charges, so it is expected that the world’s biggest third-party publisher will use the PSP as a bargaining tool for a royalty break.
In the next two weeks, we hope to bring you specific breakdowns of royalty charges for both the PSP and the NDS so you can see for yourself exactly what publishers are contending with.
Stay tuned.
According to Probst, EA has between 8 and 12 titles at some stage of development for Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Portable (PSP). What’s more, he states that all the games will be released before April 2005, a huge portfolio for an untested machine.
Probst went on to state that Electronic Arts currently believes that the PSP will hit retail in late November and will sell for between $199 and $249.
However, Electronic Arts has not yet made any development or publishing decisions regarding Nintendo’s recently announced Nintendo Dual Screen (NDS). It is thought that EA is currently negotiating with Nintendo over the royalty charges the Kyoto giant will demand for the upcoming handheld. It is a well-known fact that EA has long bemoaned Nintendo’s prohibitive Game Boy charges, so it is expected that the world’s biggest third-party publisher will use the PSP as a bargaining tool for a royalty break.
In the next two weeks, we hope to bring you specific breakdowns of royalty charges for both the PSP and the NDS so you can see for yourself exactly what publishers are contending with.
Stay tuned.
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Comments
Warzone 28 Jan 2004 18:33
1/3
Bof, who cares. Until EA gets around Xbox Live! they should mostly shut up.
Anyway, thanks Nintendo for proving me wrong... here I thought that no system could outdoom the GameCube in five years... here comes the Dumb Stupidity.
Anyway, thanks Nintendo for proving me wrong... here I thought that no system could outdoom the GameCube in five years... here comes the Dumb Stupidity.
Muggs 28 Jan 2004 23:58
2/3
You said "...they should mostly shut up." Who should shut up? Regardless, I am interested to see how the high-end portables turn out. If only X-Box made a portable...
sue_raas 29 Jan 2004 00:57
3/3
Muggs wrote:
> If only
>X-Box made a portable...
Xbox is portable if you have a muscly friend...
> If only
>X-Box made a portable...
Xbox is portable if you have a muscly friend...