EA shutting down online support for old titles
Only one per cent of players affected by closures
A number of EA titles will be losing their online services over the next few months as the company concentrates its resources on more popular games.
The shutdowns are part of EA's ongoing schedule, which is based on the number of players using the services. Titles affected will include The Sims Carnival and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 for the Wii.
Also included in the schedule are the cessation of the online services for EA's various Lord of the Rings games, which are the casualty of EA's expired licensing deal with Middle-earth Enterprises.
"As background information, the EA Sports games scheduled for shutdown in February and March 2011 represent roughly 1 per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles. Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running," read a statement on the publisher's website.
"We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99 per cent of customers playing our more popular games. These decisions to retire games is never easy.
"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. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage."