com
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick
Linden Labs, makers of Second Life
, announced a partnership with IBM and nearly 30 other companies today to work on creating a layer of interoperability across all online virtual worlds. This layer, the plans for which are being discussed publicly for the first time at today’s Virtual Worlds Expo in San Jose, would allow users to port identities and other assets from one virtual world to another.
It’s a logical next step for the medium of virtual worlds and one that could cause their number and size to grow substantially. It could also lead to bitter, if sometimes humorous, conflict between users identified primarily with different sites. Nick Carr warned this morning that the move will likely lead attacks on peaceful Second Life residents by ogres from World of Warcraft.
This has been a strong year for EA Sports. In addition to raking in piles of cash with entries in its juggernaut Madden NFL and NCAA Football franchises, games such as NHL 08 and the recently released NBA Live 08 have met with both commercial success as well as critical acclaim, which is something the NBA Live franchise has been struggling with for some time.
On top of that, after suffering criticism for its subpar online sports efforts for years, EA Sports finally seems to be jumping into the online pool with both feet. Both NHL 08 and NBA Live 08 support online leagues for the first time in both franchises’ history. Today, the publisher is announcing a free patch to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation versions of Live 08 that will allow online team play for up to 10 players on different consoles. That’s something that basketball fans have been hoping for since the advent of online play in console hoops games.
