EA finds a publishing partner in Outspark

If you think you stepped into bizarro world there for a moment, chances are you might be right. Electronic Arts, one of the leading publishers in the gaming industry, has partnered with Outspark, the MMO publisher/games portal company that holds Fiesta and Secret of the Solstice, to bring a brand new rhythm game to the US. Yes, that's right, EA is the developer while Outspark is the publisher. Freaky, we know.

The game, dubbed Debut, is coming out of EA's Korean studio J2M. Debut will feature a "casual MMO atmosphere," which will undoubtedly be something like the other rhythm games on the market and not an MMO as we see it.

So how does this affect us beyond the fact that this story includes Outspark? The reason EA has come on board with the company is due to their attraction to Outspark's business platform, which we discussed in an earlier article. The platform allows any developer to use Outspark's registration, billing, and community functionality, as well as list the game on Outspark's portal. They like to call it "marketing-in-a-virtual-box," and if that approach is enough to attract EA, then it most certainly will be drawing the eye of many other, perhaps more mainstream, MMO developers.