EA recently announced it's plans to shut down yet more game servers. Included are some Battlefield games, and annual sports titles including the not so distant Madden 10, and NHL 10.
“We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.”

Such a move is obviously done in attempt to cut costs and make EA more profitable, but one has to wonder where this leaves many of today's games in 2-3 years. The current trend in gaming is A: a multiplayer focus, and B: annual sequels, so it is a hard pill to swallow knowing that your 60$ game could have online functionality cut out in a few short years because "99% of customers" want to play the next generic shooter "Call of Honor: Modern Battlefield 7."

Such a trend makes me happy to know that games like Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, and Fallout are very much single player focused.

http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/ea-shutting-down-more-game-servers/

Posted: Jul 13, 2011 11:57 am