Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC Demo extended, delayed [Comments Off]
Let’s band-aid this one: The “Battlefield: Bad Company 2″ beta for the PC has been delayed to next year — the silver lining is, though, that DICE wants everyone to get into the beta, which means that they’ll be using the extra time to prepare for the onslaught of people who will get to experience “Bad Company 2″.
Also, it will support DirectX 11 which “further improves things like lighting and shadows.”
Get the full scoop on the PC Beta and some new and old info on the PC version at EA’s Battlefield Blog. Everything has a blog nowadays, doesn’t it?
EA unveils Mercenaries multiplayer sequel Mercs, Inc. [Comments Off]
Because “Mercenaries 2″ was not bad enough, EA just announced that the Pandemic franchise will continue in the capable hands of EA LA with a new release focussing on the multiplayer aspect of the game called “Mercs, Inc”.
We have a trailer after the break. It is both corny and awful. Here’s to another round of lay-offs.
continue reading →
EA Montreal cutting back on Wii development [Comments Off]
Looks like the whole “the Wii is the market leader so we’ll be shifting our attention towards that console” plan of EA has gone belly up, which is grounds for celebration. Not that we mind the Wii, but it seems that not a lot of people not named HAL Laboratories or Miyamoto or Suda 51 have any sort of talent to develop compelling software for the device.
EA Montreal General Manager Alain Tascan has told EDGE that the studio will re-focus on “HD-Quality” Products. And we all know HD-Quality doesn’t fly on the Wii.
“The Wii market is a little bit unpredictable these days. We’re going to see how Christmas is going to do and while with the Wii we have had very successful titles, we are going to focus on big, blockbuster-type titles. It doesn’t mean that we are going to abandon the Wii, but as a studio we want to be ready for new challenges.”
Actually, that pretty much means they will totally be abandoning the Wii, except for finishing up some products that may or may not be in the pipeline.
Oh, and about the whole shtick about the unpredictability of the Wii market reeks of bullshit to me, because I can and will predict the sales of every Wii title just by looking at the box art. One of many skills I could teach John Riccitiello.
Win a Bad Company 2 Beta Key! [Comments Off]
It’s the weekend! What are you playing? Probably “Modern Warfare 2″, but if not, we have a nice proposition for you: a beta key for “Battlefield: Bad Company 2″ to give away! It’s a key for the North American PlayStation 3 Beta, so you might want to make sure you have an American account.
All you need to do is, send a tweet addressed to @aretheinternetz on Twitter, telling us in 140 characters, why we should give it to you. Easy enough I say. Oh, you should also follow us. It’s not too much to ask, really. We’ll send the key out at 8pm CET, which is a little more than 3 hours away as of writing.
If you don’t have a Twitter account, welcome to 2009. Seriously.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PS3 Beta Woes [Comments Off]
If you’re trying to get into the beta, you’ll have to wait until the store update occurs! Save your codes until then. I got my code and an extra for Lorand. Do you have yours?!
Update: It’s up, but I’m getting no response from the servers to connect. Anyone else having this problem?
We are, but we’ll let you know once stuff sorts itself out… since that how it works, you know. Stuff works itself out.
EA’s Pandemic to be shut down, Saboteur still on track [Comments Off]
Sources inside EA are indicating that the California-based mega publisher is about to shut Pandemic down, a studio that was acquired 2 years ago for $840 million (the deal also included “Mass Effect” developer BioWare). (Kotaku)
Pandemic has released 2 games under EA, the first being the more than lacklustre Mercenaries 2 as well as the even more disastrous “Lord of the Rings: Conquest”. However, most glaringly, the studio’s biggest failure was not delivering (on) its game based on the most successful movie in recent history, “The Dark Knight”, which was met by the subsequent closing of their Australian branch in 2008.
Today, EA let 200 of the people working for Pandemic go, while promising that “the Pandemic brand and franchises will live on”, and moving a “core IP team” to their EA LA studio.
Meanwhile, Gamestop is reporting that “The Saboteur” is “unaffected” and still on track for release in December.
Due to the nature of the deal to acquire Pandemic, there is a possibility that CEO John Riccitiello will have to answer to some stockholders’ questions regarding his leadership of the company, which since he has taken over, has been far from profitable. Market Rap writes:
According to SEC documents, Mr. Riccitello pocketed up to 4.9 million on that deal, and no doubt helped his fellow co-founders of Elevation Partners walk away making a nice profit on that deal. EA’s shareholders have been left with the bill – and a stock that has fallen 70% since that deal was completed.
It would be a sad statement for shareholder activism and shareholder rights if Mr. Riccitello [sic] were to continue his tenure as CEO of Electronic Arts without a challenge. [...] Mr. Riccitello [sic] ought to consider resigning his position for committing such a blatant act of self serving greed at the expense of EA’s shareholders.
While it remains to be seen if Mr. Riccitiello will have to answer to any kind of challenge regarding his position, this deal seems pretty outrageous if you put it in perspective (see the article linked above).
Kotaku is also indicating that the team working on “Command & Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight” is being laid off after shipping the title, as well as a large part of the team making up the Maxis studio. We will report on this as it develops.
We kindly want to wish all of the laid off staff all the best in the future, as well as all our friends and ex-colleagues affected in these lay-offs.
EA frustrated with the Wii [Comments Off]
EA is a bit sad. Not just because they’re still bleeding money like crazy and had to let 1,300 people go, but also because their Wii games aren’t selling as well as they’d like.
John Riccitiello was whining about this in yersterday’s conference call:
“To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share. Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like. We are building the products that I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third-party platform.
Wii is where we are missing it and so I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out multiplatform because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii.”
Here, Mr. Riccitiello, have some cheese with that. Ok, so here’s the deal: No one cares about your dumb Wii games. Keep making EA Sports Active and you’ll be golden. Every dollar wasted on another on-rails shooter is a dollar that could’ve gone towards someone’s salary — preferably one of those people you just fired.
Yes, there are 50 million Wii consoles out there, but most people have theirs either hacked or are busy deciding between “Raving Rabbids” and “Carnival Games” to play with their grandmother, bless her heart.
Oh, in totally unrelated EA news, you know what else is going to bomb, and bomb hard? “Skate 3″. Fuck “Skate 3″.
Thanks to GI.biz for the transcript.
BestBuy has Bad Company 2 Beta codes for everyone! [Comments Off]
Okay, that’s not true. First of all, the form is live, but for some reason, you do not get a code… yet. Also, you have to own a PS3 — but I guess that’s common knowledge by now.
Here’s the form. Keep trying.
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