I know its the internet but I can almost hear the fear in people's voices as they write these responses.

Maybe it's a good thing. Many people don't know what a console is capable of nowdays. For instance many people didn't know that a PS2 also plays DVDs even when parnets bought it for there kids. What if this console takes over the upcoming Blu-ray market? That will be huge for gaming. All these companies (Philips, Pioneer, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba and Samsung) might be the trigger for the ignorent consumer. The Blu-ray market shrinks to 30-80 dollar. Above that amount only consoles are sold because they have a greater value. Only nintendo survives with there inovative idea's.

There would be NO way that I'd get a EA console, even if they did hijack a ton of game companies and bring some established franchises for their brand. The thing is, when was the last time that EA came up with a innovative game on their own? They usually will buy out a competitor just so they can have that franchise and then release about 80 variations of that game with slight differences, some good, some horribly bad. I could see it though to where EA would try to put themselves into a position to hurt MS and the 360 by this due to the racing and sports titles that they carry which would cripple much of the fanbase of the 360. (American sports/racing/etc are big here in comparison to other parts of the world). Sony could get hurt slightly by it, but they already have a good proven in house software department that will address those genres and release quality games that are usually on par or better then EA's offerings.

This sounds about right. Usually every 2 or 3 generations there's a new console. PS came in Nintendo and Sega's 3rd Gen, Xbox came into the 2nd gen of the PS brand and if this rumor is true the new machine would come into the 3rd gen since Xbox came into play. I'm excited cuz it'd be fun to see what EA can do and how this could affect the other consoles. If you think this would have no impact on other consoles then you must be a blind fanboy cuz everythingg can change in a matter of months!

the market will not support 4 different major game consoles

They already have.

If you haven't noticed, they've been buying up every western developer and all of their franchises. Next is Ubisoft rumor has it.

Agreed, everyone can smell the blood in the water, the real question is, who drops out if EA jumps in? Microsoft or Sony?

It would/will crowd the market, it would only affect US and EU killing MS consoles. It would fail to make any money.

Edit: If they really want to do this, they should work a deal with MS to partner on the Xbox brand (won't happen but it would be good for MS, and be the only chance for EA to get anywhere

Edit 2: Why would this be good for the, when thy have much less rick and have so much oppurtunity to sell the same games over and over on many different platforms?

 That doesn't imply that they HAVE to release Madden games for all platforms. It gives them exclusive rights to use the NFL license on all of those platforms, should they choose to make games for them, so another company like 2K Sports can't use the NFL license when making an football game.

OT: Wasn't a big reason that EA wanted to get Take-Two was to take over 2K Sports? (essentially their competition in the sports area) 

would be funny if they'd really tried it, but I don't think it would make much sense to EA, so in my opinion this is highly unlikely to happen

they can release crappier versions of madden, fifa on the other consoles...MANY MANY more features and MUCH better play on their console with gimped features on the other consoles...make their console's version the definitive one


in determining whether to do this, they have to look at how much they pay to nintendo+sony+ms for licensing fees vs how much it would cost them to r&d and then market/sell a console + how much they'd lose in sales from other consoles if they make the games exclusive to their console....

they will also get some licensing fees from other studios that make games and put them on the ea console, but most of the advantage of this would come from saving the money on licensing fees

if they buy up take2 and ubisoft and some others, then they could be looking at owning the rights to games that sell some 100mil copies a year combined...100mil * licensing fees (anybody have a good idea of how much the big 3 charge?) is a lot of money each year...1 billion/year if it's 10/game for licensing fees

they would likely make their console pretty similiar to ps360 or the wii/ps2 so that easy porting could be done, leading to more 3rd parties on their system paying them licensing fees

the big question for them would be if they should go exclusive or not with most of their games...predicting how many they would sell would be big here...if they did gta exclusive to their console, would it drop from selling 10mil to only 5mil? if so, that's 5mil*their cut of the game lost...and the 5mil * licensing fees doesn't make up for that unless the amount they make is equal to the amount of licensing fees paid

the best strategy would likely be to wait for tech to come down in price and then release a cheap console that is close enough to the others to have ported games and then release their major games on all the consoles, but have the by-far-definitive version be on their console...so gta goes to the others but has more missions, a larger city, more dlc, etc on their console...do that with all their big IPs and it'd be enough to sway a lot of people towards their console, especially if they also own take2 and ubisoft and a few other strategic partners

they'd also be best served to launch it with the definitive version of at least 20+ of their big selling ips (obv all the sports games, but also some of ubi's top games and gta5 and others)....wouldn't be tough since they release a ton of games each year to also port them to their console and add more content