In a move that is sure to disappoint many sports gamers, EA and the NFL have agreed to extend their exclusive deal to make NFL licensed games till 2012. EA’s Peter Moore assures gamedaily that it was the NFL who sought this deal, not EA.

The NFL lives in a world where it feels above the common ideals of competition and innovation. As a monopoly itself, it is exempt from many of the rules and regulations that the rest of corporate America must adhere to with congressional oversight supposedly keeping it in line. Somewhere in all of this, however, the NFL decided that having competition in the video game market, where several publishers would have to seriously innovate in order to succeed, was less important than raking in a huge amount of cash up front.

In the end, the consumer pays the price for these actions. The NFL and EA both get paid, while the sports fan consumer is relegated to pay $60 for what ends up being a roster refresh. Without innovation, the Madden franchise has stagnated, and true sports fans are stuck.

Team Xbox has a press release from Orb Networks announcing version 2 of their free MyCasting software, which is said to allow free streaming of internet video content directly to your next-gen consoles, including the Xbox 360.

I’ll be checking this out myself later today. If you have experiences with Orb, positive or negative, let us know in the comments!

More info here: http://www.orb.com/gamers/

Download Orb here: http://www.orb.com/download_orb

See below for the entire press release.

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: As of 2/22/2007 play.com has rescinded their price cut, and returned the price of the Xbox 360 Core to the original £199.99 price.

UK retailer play.com has dropped the price of the Xbox 360 Core system to £149.99 ($292.93US), undercutting the price of the Nintendo Wii at £179.99 ($351.57US). As far as I know, there has not been any official price drop by Microsoft. This could just be a tactic by play.com to reduce their stock of the core system..

But perhaps it’s a sign of things to come. If a rumored HDMI capable 360 is in the works, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to see Microsoft fazing out the Core system entirely. As anybody who’s watched tech companies can tell you, price cuts often are indicators of new models coming soon.
Read the rest of this entry »