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EA discontinues online support for more games

Madden NFL 10 and Army of Two are among the games that will no longer feature online gaming, Electronic Arts announces.

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About six months after Electronic Arts discontinued online play for several of its dustier titles, the company has expanded the list.

Army of Two, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, NCAA Football 10, and a handful of other titles that currently allow for online gaming on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will no longer be available to users as of August 11, the game publisher recently announced on its service-update page. PlayStation Portable games, including Medal of Honor Airborne and Need for Speed Undercover, will also have their online play discontinued on that date.

In addition, EA said that as of October 1, it will discontinue online services for Madden NFL 10 and NHL 10 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The soon-to-be-offlined games are getting old, according to the publisher, and few people are playing them.

"As games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point--fewer than 1 percent 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," EA said on its site. "We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99 percent of customers playing our more popular games."

EA's discontinuation of online services is the second such move by the company this year. In January, the publisher announced that it would no longer support online gaming for numerous titles, including The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II and Madden 10 for the PSP.

EA has noted that the decision to discontinue online support for a game isn't 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," the company said on its site when the original list went up in January.