Sony to lose Formula One franchise exclusivity to EA?

Posted Nov 1, 2007 at 1:34AM by QJ Staff Listed in: PS3, Xbox 360 Tags: EA Sports, Electronic Arts, Formula One, Sony, UK

Did Sony just lose F1 franchise exclusivity to EA? - Image 1

UK-based daily tabloid The Sun is now reporting that Electronic Arts has just stroke a deal with Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton amounting to a whopping five million GBP or roughly around US$ 10.40 million. The publication added that the driver will be featured on "Xbox and PlayStations around the world next year."

The last we looked, the Formula One video game franchise is owned by Sony with the PlayStation 3 title F1 Championship Edition being the latest iteration. However, there have been some buzz before hinting that EA Sports has got its eyes once more on the franchise.

To refresh your memories, EA Sports was supposed to do Formula One 2006. However, Sony entered the picture in the middle of production and development was ultimately continued by SCE Studio Liverpool. If The Sun's report is accurate, this only means that Sony has finally lost its F1 exclusivity.

Both EA and Sony has yet to make comments regarding the matter. Until they do, we're tabbing this one under rumor.

Via The Sun

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Comments

# not good for sim racing fans — Twenty-Se7en 2007-10-31 21:34

EA doesn't know how to do a real simulation - their business strategy is to get the most people to buy their product. F1 just got turned into NeedForSpeed people. Very fricken sad.

# old news — Gazz79 2007-10-31 21:58

Sony already made a statement the license was too expensive. Can't really blame them, everything with F1 on it just puts prices trough the roof.

# Who cares? — Keith K 2007-10-31 23:02

No one plays F1 games..

# I don't think it's as popular in the US — Vipre77 2007-10-31 23:46

I think it's probably more popular in Europe + South America than anywhere else. I downloaded the demo of the first game and wasn't all that impressed with the game physics/handling. It looked pretty, though. I didn't try it on the harder difficulty levels, though, so I suppose that might have had a large effect on my experience. A game like this gets repetitive pretty quickly. Games like GT and Forza keep people interested by having a large variety of cars to drive along with a good selection of race tracks upon which to drive them. The F1 game basically just has a selection of tracks, but not many cars. Give me GT over F1 any day.

# wow — Kaden 2007-11-01 00:11

thats probably t he most retarded thing I've seen posted in the last few days. Clearly people play them, and buy them and watch the racing. Their called fans. Deal with it. Sorry that you don't care for it and have to make yourself look dumb with dumb comments.

# i do — GW2 2007-11-01 08:21

and i like them.

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