Nvidia has announced that it has formed a strategic relationship with Electronics Arts that is expected to lead to specific support for Nvidia graphics hardware in EA games and also grants the chipmaker exclusive bundling rights. Under the agreement, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred PC graphics platform" for EA's studios, meaning that EA developers will use PCs equipped with Nvidia-based graphics and that there's a more clearly defined relationship for discussing the inclusion of Nvidia-specific features and special effects in upcoming games.

　　The announcement quite specifically mentions that EA will support Nvidia-based notebooks, which signals a recent change from the publisher's previous policy of not providing support for portable PCs. The deal will also make Nvidia the exclusive distributor of specific PC games, which means that Nvidia's manufacturing partners will be able to bundle EA games with their products as a means of differentiating them from the competition.

　　However, those who already own ATI-based products shouldn't worry that EA games will no longer work on their PCs, since the games are fundamentally based on industry standards intended to maintain compatibility across a variety of hardware.