In what has been one of the better recent executive decisions, Electronic Arts have decided to knock off the Online Pass feature that has been bundled with many of their recent titles.
Originally implemented to discourage pre-owned game sales and to cull piracy, EA’s own John Reseburg had announced that newly released EA titles will no longer include the feature.
EA has severed licensing ties with gun manufacturers. The company told Reuters that it will no longer pay gun companies to use their names and guns, however this won’t prevent these guns from featuring in future EA titles.
It has been industry practice for publishers like EA and Activision to have deals in place with weapons manufacturers to use their brands and products in games such as Medal of Honor: Warfighter and Call of Duty: Black Ops II; Eurogamer’s Simon Parkin looked at the issue earlier this year. Continue reading »
So, this was a bit of a surprise. Imagine waking up this morning with little to no hints that something was going to happen to the fate of Star Wars video games, and here we are. Today, The Walt Disney Corporation and Electronic Arts have announced a multi-year partnership in which EA will be making and producing Star Wars games. Well, more than the one they currently already make.
As far as specifics – EA will be making games for what they define as a “core audience”, or the console/PC crowd, effectively. Disney, however, retains the rights to make Star Wars games for mobile/tablet/web and online audiences. And already EA have announced that two of their studios are working on Star Wars projects; as Visceral Games and DICE will be joining Bioware in this regard.
“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” says current EA head Frank Gibeau. “Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay”. Disney is equally chuffed – “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world”, says John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive.
Personally? I’m kinda intrigued to see just what Visceral, DICE and, if they’re making something non-TOR related, Bioware are upto. Whether they continue (and finish) what products Lucasarts were planning to ship before getting shuttered, or be completely new projects, I’ve no idea. But it’ll be interesting to see where they go from here.
You’d think after the last time we heard EA bring up the “Sim” name publicly we’d all be ducking for cover and expecting the worst. Though today, it’s not the worst thing you’ll hear regarding “Sim”. In fact, it’s quite positive news – EA and Maxis today announced The Sims 4, heading to PC’s and Macs sometime in 2014.
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It’s been a pretty nuts day for EA. On one hand, they just announced that SimCity (2013) is the highest selling entry in the series, hitting a 1.1million sales in about about two weeks! On the other, CEO John Riccitiello resigned today, possibly not because of SimCity , but that certainly wouldn’t help. In the midst of all this, how about some good news for the consumers that may be affected by the…performance of the game? Well, EA’s got you covered – they’ve announced a list of eight games you’ll be able to get for free if you were an early adopter of SimCity. What games? Well, read on! Continue reading »
Last month EA Games Australia held a showcase to preview all of their upcoming titles for 2013. Aside from every game looking expectedly stellar, after less than half an hour with Fuse, SimCity, Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3, I wanted so much more.
For those who don’t know, Fuse is a squad-based four player co-operative third person shooter developed by Insomniac Games – the creators of Ratchet & Clank. Each of the four alternate characters available has their own special perks and weapons, all of which have been created using an alien technology called ‘Fuse.’ The team, known as Overstrike 9, are made up of a mercenary with an energy shield, a thief with a cloaking device, a scientist with a mass bubble gun and, my personal favourite, a detective with an electric crossbow. Regarding character choices, the creative director of Fuse, Brian Allgeier, said, “When it started out, the inspiration was Mission: Impossible. We liked the idea of this specialised team with their own unique skill-sets, so when we started going down that path we started coming up with some really innovative weaponry and really pushing the limits of where we could go.” Continue reading »
Hey folks, remember Dragon Age II? Remember how it was a sequel developed in around 18 months, had sweet nothing to do with the original game and was kinda bad on all fronts? Well, hopefully you’ve all calmed down from that game, because guess what? Bioware’s next project is a new Dragon Age game. An actual proper sequel, not some iOS or Facebook stuff. Titled Dragon Age III: Inquisition, it’s purportedly been in development for the last couple of years, and will be hitting retail shelves in late 2013. Though unfortunately, there isn’t much more than that. Continue reading »
EA Australia’s two big Melbourne studios, Iron Monkey and Firemint, have recently merged their operations to become the Firemonkeys. The two studios already shared offices, with the Firemint team moving to the St Kilda Road building that housed Iron Monkey not long after their acquisition from EA, so one could argue that such a step was long since on the cards. Continue reading »
2012′s been a weird year for EA so far. Their attempts at bringing back some of their older IP have been all over the shop – SSX was certainly good, but then you had things like Starbreeze’s Syndicate game, and the quietly released FIFA Street. So it comes as something of a surprise to hear EA talking about a future for some of these retreads, even if for some of them, it could be quite a lot better. Continue reading »
For one of the largest publishers in the world, you’d always think that EA would go large – getting crazy guests to host their E3 shows, get the hottest of bands to tie into their upcoming works and play at the conference, and drop plenty of bombs. And yet, they never do. Their events are always pretty low key and very straight forward – and their 2012 showing was no different. Even after knowing everything that was going to be shown in advance, and one pretty damned huge surprise later, it remained a good showing. Continue reading »