People won't be using their consoles for MS Office, Expression Studio, or Visual Studio anytime soon, those are the Microsoft reasons to use Windows nowadays (unless I'm mistaken, and they actually have a few more products not included in those packages).

All of EA's in-house IP's could become essentially Microsoft-system exclusives -- as in for just the X360 and maybe possibly Windows OS's. So, we're talking like Dead Space; C&C; Mercenaries series; anything DICE makes (Battlefield series and Mirror's Edge series); whatever Bioware makes (Mass Effect series; Dragon Age series; Jade Empire series; etc); NFS series; etc etc.
I'm sure the most interesting ones would be the NFL, NHL, PGA and all of those sports ones -- as I'm sure those licenses want their games on ALL systems; not be Microsoft exclusives. I wonder what would happen to those games...

This is almost certainly nothing more than a rumor generated with the aim of pushing up the value of EA shares. And what do you know, it worked.

Yeah I agree, with Microsoft being so eager to bring such in-demand titles as Dungeon Seiges, Age of Empires, Black and White, Fable, Freelancer, and Mech Warrior to digital distribution.
Oh. Um..hrm. Yeah.

It'd be stupid to cut the PS3 out of the mix completely, MS would probably only keep the really major IPs as exclusives.
Besides its all academic anyway, its probably some rumour spread just to boost EAs stock prices

MS has stated this is false, THANK GOD.
For all the crap EA gets they have been doing well lately for me, and more importantly they support the PC while MS lately actively removes PC releases.

Well, dunno what would be WORSE in this kind of situation: the morons at EA fucking up games with absurd DRM and blaming piracy for their utter incompetence, or the morons at Microsoft that built an operating system framework (Windows Vista, hence Windows 7 too) around the pathetic, useless and idiotic needs of the industry to enforce their digital fascism, ahem, copyright on any single fuc**ng bit of media stuff?
I can't even decide on this.....

I lol'd!
I don't know, the few games that I've played that have used Games For Windows LIVE have all been fairly solid.

TBH, my impression is the exact opposite. EA are far more likely to get onboard than MS. Especially with PC-games.
The rumors are silly, anyway. Or Microsoft would be, if they were really considering this. We know how they've shut down one studio after another in an attempt to save money on their MGS division, and we know EA has been bleeding money lately. Cut out the money EA makes on other consoles and the PC, and the company would be a complete disaster area. Microsoft would never profit on such a deal.

Ladies and gentlmen... Steve Ballmer!
And his by now pretty well known "developers".

Um, if you think that the morons at Microsoft made a bad OS, you can just, you know, go somewhere else. Windows 7 seems to be a quantum leap over Vista, and if you imagine Vista never existed, it's still miles better than XP in every way. Which means Microsoft kind of gets it.

MS would mean a complete lack of PC games from EA franchises, sooooo... that would be worse. DRM you can get around, the games not existing in the first place not so much.

MS buying EA and only releasing games for the PC would mean a significant drop in value of their latest toy.
Sales of games released exclusively for 1 platform means a lower total sale and more dissatisfied customers.
It would also mean a huge loss on all multi-platform games in development.
To MS Windows is of more value on the business market than on the consumer market.
Nevertheless the Windows consumer market is significant as well.
No new pc games from MS EA means a serious decrease in big titles on the pc games market.
Which means in turn people are more likely to use their current pc longer and therefore delay buying new pc's.
That means a significant drop in sales on the consumer market which not only effects MS' Windows sales, but also that off their other software and their keyboards and mouses.
I wouldn't be surprised if EA makes some kind of announcement about something which costs them money (acquisition?) which they fully or partly want to pay in shares.
EA and current EA shareholders benefit from these rumours.

Erm, that's completely true. Microsoft is totally ignoring the PC games market at the moment, they've cancelled the PC port of Alan Wake, they've shut down all their PC-studios, and they've even publicly claimed that they won't make PC-versions of certain games because then people might buy those instead of the Xbox 360 versions.
Microsoft is doing their best to kill the PC as a gaming machine. I've no idea why, it doesn't make any kind of sense for them to do it, but that's still what they're doing.