EA Joins Blitz Battleground

According to informed sources at Electronic Arts, EA Sports is gearing up to create its own clone of Midway's NFL Blitz. In fact, EA management purchased an NFL Blitz machine, and the behemoth has been ominously sitting in the EA Sports offices for quite some time - presumably serving as a model to the development of EA's Blitz-like mystery game.

Whether any game will ever reach store shelves as a result of this is uncertain. Sony is already showing the press early versions of its own Blitz clone, NFL Xtreme, and Midway is working on PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions of its arcade game.

Heck, by the time EA gets around to a finished product, the market could be flooded with similar products.

Such a situation is not far-fetched - EA isn't shy about developing games and then not releasing them. A few years ago, it worked on a whole line of similar Genesis "action sports" titles (spurned by the popularity of NBA JAM), none of which ever saw the light of day.

Depending on how the market for these games looks in the next few months, EA's unborn Blitz clone may endure the same fate.