<b>E3 2004</b>: Electronic Arts commits to Xbox Live

Giant publisher Electronic Arts has finally settled its differences with Microsoft over the Xbox Live online service, and will be Live-enabling most of its key titles in future - including, crucially, the bulk of the EA Sports range.

The announcement of EA's support for the service formed the cornerstone of Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference in Los Angeles a few hours ago, illustrating just how important this deal is considered to be for the future of the console's online ambitions.

Aside from the huge EA Sports range - some titles of which will be Live-enabled as soon as July - the company also plans to add Live play to key forthcoming games including Burnout 3, TimeSplitters Future Perfect, Battlefield: Modern Combat, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and Need for Speed Underground 2.

Crucially for the European market, FIFA Football 2005 will support the service, as will Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 and a host of American sports titles - NCAA Football 2005, NHL 2005, NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup, NBA Live 2005, Madden NFL 2005 and NCAA Football 2005.

It's a huge list of games, and certainly a major feather in Microsoft's cap to have finally settled the EA dispute. We do wonder, however, just what the company has had to sacrifice in order to win the support of the largest independent publisher in the industry; reports from insiders suggested that the areas of contention between the two companies largely hinged around the ownership of the billing relationship with customers.

We don't know what concessions Microsoft has had to give EA in that area, but it wouldnââ'¬—¢t be entirely surprising if the Redwood Shores based publisher has been granted access to establish limited billing relationships with Live customers who use EA titles on the service.

Another concession on Microsoft's side may well have been the XSN Sports range of games, which were unceremoniously shunted back for an entire year only weeks ago - ostensibly for quality reasons, most likely to put them into development as early release titles for Xbox 2, but conveniently leaving the path clear for EA's swathe of Live-enabled sports games later this year.

Regardless of what sacrifices were made in the negotiations, Microsoft is understandably happy at having finally overcome one of the biggest hurdles to the success of the Live service. "EA has always been a great publisher for Xbox," gushed Microsoft's chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach, "we're strengthening our alliance by bringing EA's world-class games to Xbox Live, the undisputed leader in online console gaming."