EA Positions Itself for Social Network Gaming

A five year deal has been struck between Electronic Arts and Facebook, which aims to streamline and simplify the accessibility of EA-developed games on the social network. EA already has several games in the social space, notably Pet Society and Restaurant City (both by EA developer Playfish), and this new partnership essentially makes Facebook Credits the sole means of payment in all Facebook-integrated EA games.

Yes, I know…it’s dreadfully boring stuff. Finances…ugh! It’s also a bit of a hopeful sign, I think, for that Ultima title we’ve been hearing so much about, the browser-based effort that BioWare Mythic has been working on. Facebook would, almost by definition, be the primary/target/only(?) market for that game…so it certainly doesn’t hurt the chances that the product will see the light of day that EA is shoring up agreements with Facebook, does it?