As is a tradition at Electronic Arts, the start of a new year always seems to bring an announcement from the publisher that they are going to pull the online plug for a number of older titles. While players will still be able to enjoy the games offline, online play will be no more.

The majority of the titles are sports titles, with the notable exception of Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, which is also getting the online axe. (Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth apparently is ending because of the loss of the licensing deal that it no longer has.) As for the sports titles, only the latest two versions will continue to offer online support in most cases, which means that sports titles from 2009 and earlier that still had online support active are finally being retired.

The most other notable titles that are having the online support discontinued include Fight Night Round 3, FIFA Street, and NFL Head Coach 09 on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms. FIFA Street and NFL Head Coach 09 do not currently have newer versions, but apparently they are not generating enough online players to remain popular, according to sources.

EA claims that the online traffic of these titles only represents 1 percent of the peak online traffic for all EA online titles.

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