Madden 2003?
 

Will Madden 2003 for the X-Box be for X-Box Live?

Re: Madden 2003?
 

Not this season. Online is exclusive to PS2 for this year. If you want online football on Xbox, you'll have to play Sega's NFL2K3 or Microsoft's NFL Fever 2003.

Do you know why Madden is going go be for x-box live?

What was the reason behind this? Was it just Sony paying EA for an online exclusive or was there a stink between EA and MS about Xbox Live?

My question was supposed to read, does anyone know why Madden won't be for the x-box live?

I haven't seen any proof (and there likely won't ever be any) but I've seen speculation that Sony paid EA for the exclusivity. Obviously, PS2 is EA's bread and butter console (with poor competition from 989's Gameday) so it probably didn't take much to convince EA to go exclusive.

The only reasons EA has given are whines about the integrated interface X-Box Live will have for all of its games... They wanted to do their own thing...

Sounds like a bunch of bull... Sony paying off EA in some way or another sounds more plausible...

I don't think Sony paid EA for exclusivity. When EA announced that they wouldn't be supporting XBox Live, they only mentioned that it was because they couldn't come to an agreement with MS.

As agrall mentioned, the rumors are that the actual disagreement was over the fact that MS is insisting that the portal to all online games must run through their XBox live portal. It's possible that there are other issues that are the real reason, but I this would be reason enough for many companies.