EA: We want an open gaming platform

Friday 19th October 2007 - 17:00

World's biggest publisher wants an end to console rivalry; Sega announces a new tennis series and Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Wii screens

In a revealing interview with the BBC, one of the head honchos at EA, the world's biggest publisher, has called for a single open ended games platform for publishers to release games on.

Gerhard Florin , a senior EA executive predicted that server-based games streamed to PCs or set-top boxes, would become increasingly important. "You don't need an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii - the consumer won't even realise the platform it is being played on. We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," he stated. "We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden."

In effect, this would bring an end to all of the console rivalry between dedicated systems touted by the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo with the gamer simply having to pay for a streamed service via set top boxes and accessed through the Internet. This decision of course isn't in the hands of the publisher it rests with the console manufacturers. That is of course unless EA - a company that is valued in excess of $1billion decides to partner up with a content delivery service or set top box player. The mind boggles.

Meanwhile, news reaches us from the Sega camp that an all new tennis game is being made available early next year. Sega Superstars Tennis has over 15 playable Sega idols including Sonic the Hedgehog, AiAi from Super Monkeyball fame, Ulala of Space Channel 5 and Amigo from Samba De Amigo. In addition to their own unique attributes, each character will also come equipped with their own superstar tennis skills, putting a whole new spin on each match played. Considering Sega's pedigree with producing decent tennis games (they publish the Virtuaa Tennis games) we expect great things come March next year!