earnings posts

It's not exactly a shock, but tonight at the Video Game Awards it was officially announced that developer BioWare will indeed be releasing Mass Effect 3, the third game in its acclaimed sci-fi RPG series. The announcement and brief teaser trailer also came with a "holiday 2011" release date.

BioWare already has two games due out in 2011; the fantasy RPG Dragon Age 2 and the MMO title Star Wars: The Old Republic from the developer's Austin,Texas studio. There are rumors that Mass Effect 3 will feature a multiplayer component but so far there's no word on that feature. In the meantime you can check out the teaser trailer after the jump.

It's hot, humid and in some places dry here in the US. Time to stay inside in an air conditioned den or office and play some PC games. If you want to get some titles to add to your collection but have little money here's some suggestions:

• As we reported earlier this week GamersGate has a ton of action games on sale for as much as 75 percent off.
• Also as previously reported, Steam has a Booster Trooper free weekend and 50 percent sale his weekend along with the QuakeCon 2010 bundle of 27 games for just $69.99.
• Impulse has a number of games on sales this weekend including Command and Conquer 4 and Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 for just $14.99 each.
• GoG.com has the two Phantasmagoria games on sale in a bundle for 30 percent off or each for 15 percent off.
• EA's online store has three EA racing games on sale: Need For Speed Shift for $22.46, Burnout Paradise for $7.49 and Need For Speed Undercover for a mere $4.97
• Direct2Drive has Men of War on sale for just $7.50 all this week.

You thought that BioWare was done with revealing the player classes in their upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic didn't you? Nope. Not by a long shot. Eurogamer has announced that all eight player classes will each have access to two specialised Advanced Classes. Each class will have their own special skills, with access to different kinds of weapons and items.

So far only one of the player classes has had its Advanced Classes revealed. Players who pick the Sith Warrior will have a choice of picking between the Juggernaut (tough and takes a lot of damage) and the Marauder (who deals a lot of damages). Naturally you can expect even more Advanced Classes reveals in the coming months.

Electronic Arts' people sim sequel The Sims 3 is no stranger to in-game promotions. The title has already had Dr. Pepper offer free in-game items. Now the publisher has announced a new deal with car maker Renault to offer players a free in-game version of Renault's electric car, the Twizy Z.E. Concept.

The free car, which will apparently not be made available in the US and Canada for some reason, will be part of a Electric Vehicle Pack that will allow players to add other environmentally friendly items into the game such as a windmill and solar panels. A Sims family will be able to lower their bills if they have these kinds of items.

While it's not exactly a major flood of departures, there have been a number of long time employees at Infinity Ward that have departed the game developer following the firing of its two founders by Activision last March. Kotaku now reports that two more long time employees of Infinity Ward have decided to resign.

One is Mackey McCandlish, lead designer of their current release Modern Warfare 2 and who had been at the developer right at or close to its founding in 2002. The other is programmer Jon Shiring who had been at Infinity Ward for six years. As was revealed on Monday the developer's founders, Vince Zampella and Jason West, have landed squarely on their feet by launching their new company, Respawn Entertainment, with a publishing deal with Electronic Arts.

It's still in the embryonic stage at this point (just two employees, no game and no physical office) but the founders of the newly revealed Respawn Entertainment, Vince Zampella and Jason West, have still been hitting the interview circuit hard today. Our sister site Joystiq talked with the duo, who previously co-founded Infinity Ward and launched the Call of Duty first person shooter series with former publisher Activision.

While there is still no game dev under development yet, the new team won't be working on an established property for their new publisher Electronic Arts but rather on their own original projects. Respawn will also own the game's IP which should allow them to expand any game they make into other properties on their own (like movies, comic books, toys and the like) without having to go through EA. They will just be working on one game at a time, at least at first, and naturally they are starting up the hiring process.

Meanwhile Activision, who are currently in a legal battle with Zampella and West after the publisher dismissed them from Infinity Ward last month, issued their own reaction to the Respawn Entertainment announcement: "This agreement comes as no surprise to Activision given the myriad of improper activities detailed in the cross-complaint filed on Friday against Jason West and Vince Zampella. We look forward to continuing to work with Infinity Ward's deep bench of proven talent on exciting new projects."

While designer American McGee and his team at Spicy Horse are continuing to work on their remake of American McGee's Alice for Electronic Arts, the company also has another game that he plans to pitch to publishers during next week's Game Developers Conference. On his Flickr web page, McGee has posted up a couple of concept art pieces for the project; a mature retelling of the Red Riding Hood story.

The artwork depicts the title character with an axe and a disposition to use it on some mystical wolves. Again this is just concept artwork for a game that has yet to get the green light but it's clear that McGee still wants to revamp childhood legends. You can check out the other concept art piece after the jump:

[Via GameSetWatch]

Decades of street fighting, mega man-ing, zombie capping and monster hunting are still paying off for Capcom. The company has reported a 14.5 per cent growth in their net sales compared to this term last year, according to an official press release issued earlier this morning.

Sited as a major contributor to the growth is Monster Hunter Freedom 2G for the PlayStation Portable, which became the first Japanese software PSP title to sell over 2 million units. Monster Hunter Freedom 2G was released on March 27 of this year.

Struggling is Capcom's Arcade Operations, which showed a weak performance compared to the company's Home Video Games Business. This statistic isn't too surprising, as arcades have all but faded into fond memories over the past ten or more years.

One wonders how Street Fighter IV will fare when it is initially released in arcades. We suppose it will do well given the success of its predecessors, but it's not too great of an assumption to bet on the game's great sales and profit when it is released on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

While we're speculating, how much better do you think Capcom's profits will look at this time next year, given Resident Evil 5's console release in mid-March?