Games under EA's development continued to use Gamespy, but dropped support for Westwood Online in favor of using EA's own servers.

Other explanations include use of day-one DLC and EA's habit of acquiring smaller developers to squash competition.

* December 13 — Electronic Arts purchases a 5-year exclusive agreement for the rights to the NFL, which includes NFL teams, stadiums and players for use in EA's football video games.

The game's engine was originally designed for use in a sequel to EA's WCW Mayhem, but EA lost the WCW license when the wrestling company was purchased by the World Wrestling Federation in 2001.

The PC version of the game introduced EA's " Face in the Game " feature, allowing players to use custom facial photographs on created players.

After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN.

This was a particularly hard blow to Sega, the previous holder of the ESPN license, who had already been affected by EA's NFL deal.

EA's early usage of the ESPN license began with ESPN Radio and a sports ticker in titles like Madden NFL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and NCAA Baseball and Football.

EA lost the rights for Major League Baseball ( MLB ) games to 2K Sports in 2005, ending EA's MVP series ; however, EA made NCAA Baseball games in 2006 and 2007 after losing the MLB license.

For the first time with real player names by obtaining the FIFPro license, the PlayStation, PC, 32X and Sega Saturn versions used EA's " Virtual Stadium " engine, with 2D sprite players moving around a real-time 3D stadium.

However, film director Peter Jackson's admiration of the game — and his frustration with EA's handling of the The Lord of the Rings license — led to Ancel being given direction of the King Kong video game adaptation.

All of EA's labels and studios are overseen by CEO John Riccitiello who has held the position since 2007.

" Later, Take-Two released a statement explaining why the company has rejected the offer, " In addition to undervaluing key elements of our business, EA's proposal fails to recognize the value we are building through our ongoing turnaround efforts, which will further revitalize Take-Two.

Apart from this, the company has created content for EA's GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, and multiple mobile and handheld titles, including The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey for Nokia's N-Gage and mobile versions of Tenchu, X-Men 2: Battle, Gauntlet and an adventure game based on the movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

She has recently provided her likeness and voice for the character Kendra Daniels in EA's survival horror video game Dead Space.

For example, Origin-produced Ultima VIII: Pagan and Ultima IX: Ascension were developed quickly under EA's ownership, over the protests of Ultima creator Richard Garriott, and these two are widely considered to be subpar compared to the rest of the series.

EA's aggregate review performance had shown a downward trend in quality over recent years and was expected to affect market shares during competitive seasons.

Stocks went up by 54 % on Monday, following the Sunday announcement, closing over the offer price, whilst EA's own stock prices went down by 5 %, the largest loss in over a year.

With EA's distribution, Pinball Construction Set eventually sold 300, 000 copies over all platforms.

The game's core development was started with EA's acquired Renderware engine, but it made the switch to the Unreal 3 engine in early 2006 which delayed the game by over a year.

When the game was released in 1984 it became one of EA's biggest early hits, selling over 400, 000 copies.

A novel approach to giving credit to its developers was one of EA's trademarks in its early days.

The key points of EA's early advertising programs were the isometric view of the pitch, an innovation seen previously in 1983's International Soccer but at a time when most other games preferred either top down, side scrolling or bird's eye views, as well as detailed graphics and animations, and of course the FIFA endorsement.

Through an undisclosed deal with Electronic Arts UK, most of the development staff, and the game they were developing ( which was close to completion ) – Warhammer: Dark Omen – was moved to EA's offices in Guildford, Surrey, and released in early 1998.

For the first half of the decade, Maxis continued to produce expansions and sequels to The Sims, though EA's branding became more and more visible.

In response to EA's buyout, many long-time Westwood employees quit and left Westwood Studios.

Because of this and EA's newly imposed demands, games being developed by Westwood Studios at the time were rushed and left unfinished upon their release, namely Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

" Are Friends Electric " appeared on EA's game Need For Speed: Carbon in 2006.

The group ’ s songs " My Favorite Mutiny " and " Pork & Beef " were featured in the 2007 film Superbad, with the former also being featured in the video game NBA Live 07, while " Ride the Fence " was featured in EA's 2007 skateboarding video game Skate.

According to IGN, " Interplay's inability to prise the Wasteland brand name from EA's gnarled fingers actually lead to it creating Fallout in the first place.

The fifteen tracks from the game are also available as MP3s for download on EA's SC3K website for listening outside of the game.

The song, " This Disaster ", was featured in EA Sports ' Madden NFL 2005, and " At Least I'm Known for Something " was featured in EA's Burnout 3: Takedown.

However, it was only possible to connect to other computers through EA's servers and not with LAN play.

Sine Language was included in EA's soundtrack for the game Need for Speed: Nitro.

EA's rankings have been propped up by the launch of The Sims Social, which was the fastest-growing game on Facebook in late 2011.

This characterization was even further reinforced with EA's packaging of most of their games in the " album cover " pioneered by EA because Hawkins thought that a record album style would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling.

Much of EA's success, both in terms of sales and with regards to its stock market valuation, is due to its strategy of platform-agnostic development and the creation of strong multi-year franchises.

** EA Interactive — Includes EA's Pogo. com online service, Playfish and EA Mobile.

The label is headquartered at EA's campus in Redwood Shores, although the original studio is located in Emeryville.

Founded in 2008 developing PC games for EA's new Play4Free series.

One critique compared EA to companies like Ubisoft and concluded that EA's innovation in new and old IPs " Crawls along at a snail's pace ," while even the company's own CEO, John Riccitiello, acknowledged the lack of innovation seen in the industry generally, saying, " We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.