EA being braver than brave ??

Gerhard Florin, Electronic Art's head of international publishing on the console market:

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo should abandon the console wars and help build a common gaming platform. We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," said EA's head of international publishing.

ARE YOU MAD ?!!! The *ONLY* time something like this will happen is when hell freezes over, or peace is achieved in the Middle East and Africa. Otherwise, forget it!

Creating one platform = Cheaper production costs for EA, which in turn means greater profit! I doubt it very much EA will make its games any cheaper and they are known as 'Earn Alot' from gamers! so technically having one platform for games just makes his job easier!

Creating one platform = Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo (and any other console out there - Apple ?) must come to terms and either create one project entity or close down... no one is going to be willing to 'share' profits... We live in a world driven by money and financial gains, where performance is about how much you made the company and where we can all confidently say if you have no money, you dont amount to very much!

Creating one platform = cultural hassles (language, design, name). As a gamer im more than happy that most of the Far East style games that involve young girls slashing and dicing left right and center and encouraging scantily clad year 8 girls to 'free the world' of a ten thousand tentacled beast are well out of my reach! Failing that I dont think the Middle East will like the bullet riddling mercenaries running around killing 'Arabic speaking' characters!

Creating one platform will never happen unless you have *ONE* culture, and i don't mean country specific! European game play is very different from US game play, from the Far East and from the Middle East! You cant expect all to play an English version of Halo...

Personally, creating a one console one platform unit would be looooovely! But it just wont happen.

Instead of whining about EA's format issues and the consoles out there, why don't you bang your head and come up with your own set up box!!! you have several amazing franchises, FiFa, NFL, Battlefield series to name a few... and its not like you don't have the revenue of $3.129 billion for the fiscal year March 31, 2005 money!!

Gaming will just require potentially a £49.99 box from Tesco made in China with a hard drive, a wi-fi connection and a games engine inside

- Nick Parker, analyst

You know you want to EA!