Electronic Arts has decided to shut down the online services for a handful of their older games, the company does this quite often, most of the time doing so with the annual sports games. Server closings will begin on August 11 of this year, the 2010 editions of Madden and NHL will follow suit on October 1.
The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy," says the company on their support site. "The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point -- fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles -- where it’s feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running. 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.
EA is usually clear about when their games lose online support, and you can see all the other games that no longer work in the online world at the same support site. Here are the games that are gone in a few weeks:
August 11, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
- Army of Two for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Army of Two Demo for Xbox 360
- Battlefield 2142 Demo for PC
- Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox 360
- Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Demo for Xbox 360
- Medal of Honor Airborne for PlayStation Portable
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
- NASCAR 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (North America)
- NCAA Basketball 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- NCAA Football 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Need for Speed Most Wanted for PC and Xbox 360
- Need for Speed Undercover for PlayStation Portable;
- SKATE for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 for PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
- Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 11 Demo for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
October 1, 2011 Online Service Shutdown
- Madden NFL 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
- NHL 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360