Rumor: EA Preventing Universal In-Game Voice Chat on PS3?

[I am Penguin]

Damn, I would not even believe it for a minute.

/rumor-EA

"It's not Activision. It's not Ubisoft. It's not Capcom. It's not Insomniac. It's not Konami. It's not Take 2. It's not Midway. It's not Squaresoft. are wE All getting the picture yet? One point I want to reiterate - there's a difference between the games that didn't work with in-game XMB and the games that DID work with in-game XMB but DIDN'T work well with custom soundtracks, so stop picking out the ones that simply didn't do in-game XMB. Also, it wasn't just ONE game that caused this, either. Although one title does come to mind and it wasn't even what you or I would call a "Big" game. I'll give you a hint: HPatOofP."

 

[I am Penguin]

Rumor Debunked? So where is it? Cross chat is required now!
http://kotaku.com/5347123/is-ea-holding-back-ps3-cross+game-voice-chat

Rather than jump to conclusions, we decided to contact the two parties involved for comment on the situation. First to respond was Jeff Brown, EA's vice president of corporate communication. "Not no-how, not no-way did that ever happen. This is a total fabrication – total nonsense. We think voice chat is an extremely cool feature and added it to Madden/ PS3." Brown then added, "We support cross-game voice on other systems and would be happy to do that on any console."

Soon after Brown responded to our inquiry, Sony's senior director of corporate communications Patrick Seybold also responded, keeping things short and sweet. "This is rumor and frankly not true. "

I suppose it's up to the reader to determine what they believe, but I'm leaning towards the rumor being utter nonsense. Two responses from EA and Sony both were far from the 'no comments' and 'not responding to rumors and speculation' I've come to expect in situations like these.