Real Weather in Digital Sports
May 23rd, 2007
EA Sports, the massively profitable designer of dozens of sports-themed video games, has partnered with the Weather Channel to make real-time atmospherics available on their next generation of releases for the PS3 and X-Box 360. So if it suddenly starts to snow in Happy Valley, in your game Penn State’s team will have to slog through the slush or a cloudless Arizona sky will shoot glare into the various Wildcats and Sun Devils. All of this leads, I suppose, to a more realistic experience. Well, as realistic as sitting inside mashing buttons can seem.
The excess computing power in your average PS3 or X-Box lets the video game industry stuff as many bells and whistle as possible into their flagship titles. In game advertising (changeable through the Internet) is becoming a huge business, allowing a popular title to extend its money-making abilities beyond the initial purchase.
Nevertheless, the dedication of EA Sports designers to accuracy is impressive. In fact, when I play NCAA Football as Yale, each dropped pass, failed right sweep, or wayward throw looks exactly like how the real Yale team plays. It’s uncanny.
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