EA Land Enters the MMO Deadpool

Posted by Stropp on April 30, 2008

That didn’t last long.

Back in February Electronic Arts announced that they would be re-badging The Sims Online as EA Land, making it free with a subscription required for additional content, and allowing players to make all sorts of goodies, sort of like Second Life. The idea was to revitalize TSO and (I believe) break into the lucrative kiddies market.

Well, it looks like the kiddies weren’t having it.

According to Massively, Electronic Arts felt that EA Land hadn’t met its targets for continued existence. Consequently, EA will be turning off the servers at the end of July this year.

I find it a little interesting that EA didn’t give the newly branded game much of a chance to meet its targets. EA Land was up against a few other virtual worlds. The biggest of these was Second Life, which was a constant drain on EAs subscribers.

I’m just guessing here, but it seems to me that EA-Land was The Sims Onlines last chance. EA had probably already decided to close TSO down but gave the development team one more chance to pull it out of a nosedive. The rebranding was part of the strategy to do this, but really didn’t work.

Thus EA Land dives into the MMO Deadpool.

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