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EA denies Richard Garriott's claims of Ultima Online discussions
What would a recent day in MMO news be without a mention of Richard Garriott? Today's entry is especially interesting in a he-said-they-said kinda way. A few days ago, Richard Garriott spoke up on the possibility of a reincarnation of the Ultima franchise through talks "at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property." But EA is now denying this claim. EA's Jeff Brown recently told IndustryGamers in a candid interview that he's not sure what Lord British is talking about. "No one at EA is discussing partnership or licensing opportunities related to the Ultima Online franchise." Sorry Ultima Online fans, it seem that either the talks were supposed to be confidential, or they simply didn't happen at all.
EA's Riccitiello says game discs aren't going away
While Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello thinks digital distribution will finally outstrip its physical counterpart in 2011, he stops short of predicting the demise of retail packaging. In the second part of an interview conducted by Industry Gamers, the EA bossman sings the praises of the disc and debunks trendy cloud computing-based notions of gaming's near future. "Sometimes you're not going to play because your internet connection is down and sometimes delivering a game by streaming is a really inefficient way to do it," Riccitiello says, in what might be music to the ears of gaming luddites dismayed at the thought of renouncing actual ownership of their collections. Riccitiello goes on to posit that services like OnLive will struggle with latency-dependent titles (your average first person shooter, for example) and ultimately concludes that the days of 100% digital delivery are pretty far into the future.
