Electronic Arts poised for Net play reports CNET News.com (saw that on Tom's Hardware). Here's the lowdown on the report, which currently is still all speculation:

REDWOOD CITY, California--Electronic Arts, the No. 1 video-game publisher, is poised to unveil a series of Internet initiatives that may boost its profit and stock price, analysts and investors said.

While company executives declined to comment on the plans, chief financial officer Stan McKee has been telling investors that Electronic Arts wants to get 20 percent of its sales from online sources within three years. That could equal several hundred million dollars a year for the Redwood City, California, company, which had $1.2 billion in sales for fiscal 1998.

Electronic Arts' bet on Internet-based gaming could help it weather transitions to new game-console technology, which could cause industry sales to stall as consumers wait for new consoles to buy new game software. Still, the company must overcome technical and marketing barriers to lure millions of users to pay for online games and entertainment, analysts said.