Is this the beginning of the twilight years of the PS2’s impressive lifespan? Eurogamer reports that NHL 10 (this is the trouble with making a new sports game every year – the names get ridiculous) won’t be getting PS2 or PC ports.
There was a time when EA would have been porting every one of their titles to every platform (including, no doubt, Gizmondo, NGAGE and Dreamcast) but it looks like they’re deciding to wind up production instead. True, this is just one game (and not a hugely popular sport over here), but across the pond it’s another story. They’re putting the blame squarely at the feet of the current economic climate, but given they generally port Wii engine games to PS2 and vice versa, it wouldn’t have taken that much extra budget.
The only thing we can read into this is that the PC and PS2 are now the least popular platforms for new releases (in the USA at least). PC mainly because of piracy (and possibly the fact that sports games work better on a big TV with a gamepad) and the PS2 because… well, maybe because the type of people who buy the next title in sports series year upon year are the types who have already joined this generation of console hardware.
Watch this space – it’s either a one-off in a very specific genre of year-on-year sporting tie-ins or simply the end of the PS2’s lifespan. At least in North America – the likes of FIFA may still get the PS2 treatment if Europeans still have love for Sony’s smaller black box.
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