We’ve talked a bit about this on the daily show and I wanted to give you a link to the actual list of titles that EA is shutting down.  One of the biggest are the 2010 sports titles.  Here’s the link.  And here’s what EA is saying about the decision…

The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point — fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles — where it’s feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running.

We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.

Makes sense eh?  Not.  So you want to charge for an online pass that will be pointless in a year huh?  Okay, now I get it.  How about charging less for games because you know eventually no one will play them?  Nah…they won’t go there.