Electronic Arts' next round of server closures includes recent entries in the FIFA Soccer and Madden NFL series as well as the best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims 2.

2013 is underway and this year will likely feature more than a few obituaries for video games. Not that the medium is in any sort of extreme peril but as the future becomes the present, more and more games played online will be taken offline as their audiences shrink. Electronic Arts, one of the three biggest video game publishers in the world, regularly brings less populated games offline but its most recent service update is surprising. Both a perennial best-seller for the company and a selection of its popular sports simulators are being taken offline, demonstrating that the lifespan of online games is shrinking quickly.

First, EA is taking down its most popular 2010 sports titles offline just over two years after they were first released. On Jan. 11, EA will take down servers for Madden NFL 2011 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii, as well as the Madden NFL 11 Ultimate Team servers for Xbox 360 and PS3. (Ultimate Team is the virtual card collecting game featured in recent editions of EA’s sports titles.) FIFA Soccer 11 and FIFA Soccer 11 Ultimate Team will be taken offline on those same platforms and the PC version of FIFA 11 will be taken down as well.

Those heavy hitters aren’t alone though. NBA Jam for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 won’t be playable online any more. Nor will NHL 11 or NCAA Football for consoles. Electronic Arts is also taking down servers for NBA Live 2010, the last entry in its long running NBA simulator that’s experienced a tumultuous development cycle since with multiple reboots cancelled.

Sports titles aren’t the only games getting the axe in January. EA will also be shutting down The Sims 2 on PC and Mac just over eight years after the game originally released. In July 2012, The Sims 2 became the best-selling PC game ever made.

These closures are significant for a number of reasons. First, the server shutdowns for EA’s sports titles suggest that the publisher is taking its franchises offline faster than they have to date. It’s inevitable considering the need to keep people buying new entries in the series, but it demonstrates the need to evolve the current business model of these series. EA can’t keep making a new FIFA and a new Madden every year forever. At some point these games will have to become persistent products that are regularly updated with new features and rosters.

In regards to The Sims 2, EA is proving that video games need to be better preserved. Forget that the game can’t be played online any longer, the real problem is that players will no longer be able to download content. After this month, The Sims 2 will not be available as a complete product.

“[As] games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level—fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles—where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running,” reads EA’s statement on server closures.  

A magazine ad has suggested that Samsung may launch its Galaxy Note 2 in new colors.

Any tech geek who has been following Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2 launch has probably picked up on how similar it is to the company’s Galaxy S3 release. Like Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Note 2 comes with the same curved design as the S3 and was also released on all five major U.S. carriers following its launch, unlike the original Galaxy Note.

Samsung is pulling yet another similar move by introducing new color variants for the Galaxy Note 2. According to Japanese site Blog of Mobile, brown and red variants of the Note 2 have been outed in a magazine ad and could be making their way to South Korea in the near future.

The official names for these two colors are believed to be Amber Brown and Ruby Wine. The brown version of Samsung’s second-generation “phablet” is already available in Japan, so it’s only a matter of time before the Korea-based company launches this variant in other countries as well. Although the magazine ad clearly depicted these two new color choices, the advertisement doesn’t reveal any information about when these versions would launch.

While a commercial ad for new editions of the Note 2 certainly seems promising, we can’t be sure that these colors will roll out in South Korea until Samsung makes an official announcement. In addition, it remains unclear as to whether or not these colors will make their way to other nations, like the United States.

Amber Brown and Ruby Wine aren’t the only new shades that Galaxy Note 2 fans may be seeing soon. An allegedly leaked press photo of a black version of the Note 2 surfaced online last week, furthering suspicion that Samsung will roll out more color options very soon. This darker version of Samsung’s 5.5-inch device has not been confirmed, but the image was reported by multiple websites. No source has been specified, but the picture depicted Samsung’s logo sprawled across the back of the black handset.

This speculation about new color variants comes just as the Galaxy Note 2 hit a major milestone in its South Korean market. Sales of the Galaxy Note 2 have officially topped one million sales in the country as of Monday.

The Galaxy Note 2 has already proven itself to be one of Samsung’s most successful devices, and we’re interested to see if the company confirms any of these rumors during January’s Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas or February’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Recently, there have been many factors pointing to the idea that Sony is  planning to officially reveal a pair of brand new 1080p 5 inch smartphones at CES 2013 next week.  The latest of this has come from Sony itself: there have been some official press releases of the Xperia ZL and Xperia Z leaked to the net directly through Sony’s website.

These devices have popped up many times in the past (under the names Yuga and Odin) and that, along with the previous photos of the Xperia Z, it is all but confirmation of Sony’s intent on releasing these phones.  The Xperia Z is a standard Sony phone, however the Xperia ZL is a scaled down version of the Xperia Z and has a different location for the front facing camera.

Past rumors have suggested the Z will have LTE connectivity, 2GB of RAM and the same quad core Qualcomm processor as the HTC Droid DNA and LG Nexus 4.  At this time, it is not clear if the Xperia ZL will sport the same specs.  We will just have to wait until CES to be sure.

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m getting stoked for CES 2013!