Suddenly, EA Faces PlayStation Competition

So naturally, EA Sports has plans for PlayStation 3. The company is launching three titles at around the same time as the PS3 -- Madden NFL 07, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 and the boxing game Fight Night Round 3. The company also has some clever ideas for the PS3's new controller: In Fight Night, players can make an illegal move by thrusting the controller forward.

But while 2K Sports has been winning a solid rep for good games, some of EA Sports' biggest fans worry that the company sometimes appears to be slipping.

Consider EA's hoops title, NBA Live. Fan sites once dedicated to discussing the finer points of the video game now devote more time to documenting weird glitches. You really don't have to be a sports junkie to get a chuckle out of the game's screwy physics problems, such as a basketball that hits the court and sticks to the ground like a shotput. Some fans have posted video clips of the quirks on the video site YouTube.

One site, NBALive.org, recently posted an open letter to the company. "At one time, EA was producing the best titles money could buy and one had little reason to look elsewhere," the letter read. "Now gamers have a sense that if you want the best, it's not EA."

EA spokeswoman Tammy Schachter acknowledged that NBA Live has software issues, which EA plans to address by releasing a patch within a few weeks.

Some of the grumbling about EA started when the company struck an exclusive deal with the National Football League and the NFL Players Association in 2004, effectively killing the competition by ensuring that no one else got the right to use the NFL logo or player names.

Video-game fan Nik Carr-Voigt expressed another concern that seems to be going around: He is annoyed that EA seems determined to squeeze every penny out of him. The classic uniforms that were free last season on Xbox are not included in this year's Xbox 360 game, meaning he has to crank out a few bucks now if he wants that feature. He said that he has also been surprised at the number of goofs in the latest Madden title.

"They've made a ton of mistakes," he said. "I really regret spending $60 on it."