electronic-arts posts

Fans of Need For Speed Shift have likely been wondering if Electronic Arts would be offering any downloadable extras for the racing sim. Today EA sent the word out that the first such free DLC is on its way. Owners of the PC version will be able to download the DLC on December 1.

The free extras will include the addition of four American classic muscle cars and one import sports car to the game (1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427, 1967 Shelby GT-500, 969 Dodge Charger R/T, 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T, 1998 Toyota Supra Mark). It will also add the Team Racing online gameplay mode where two teams of up to six cars battle it out in stock vehicles.

Fans of BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins have already been able to download some extra content for the fantasy RPG. Today BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts announced plans to offer up another extra downloadable quest for the game. The DLC, titled Return to Ostagar, is due for release "this holiday season". That most likely means it will be available for download before the end of 2009.

The new quest will return players "to the fateful battleground in Ostagar" where they will "discover King Cailan's top-secret political agenda." Wow. Sounds a little bit like our world has entered into BioWare's fantasy kingdom. The DLC will cost 400 "BioWare points" (about $5) to download. We don't like the idea of purchasing "BioWare points" to download extra content but . . .oh well.

It's unusual for a publisher to go back and redesign the box art for a game. Yet that's what Bioware and Electronic Arts have decided to do with the artwork for the Mass Effect 2 retail release. You can check out the original artwork in our earlier August 2 story.

We are not quite sure why the companies decided to go back and do a revamp of the box art. Quite frankly the original looks more dynamic and action packed to us. This new version seems to have the characters in less dynamic poses. Oh well, marketing was never our strong point.

Rumors that the upcoming Command and Conquer 4 game might actually be the last in the series seem to be unfounded. However the next game in the RTS franchise might not be released in stores. Gamasutra reports they have obtained an internal memo from Electronic Arts stating they have hired Jon Van Caneghem to lead the C&C team with "a new digital model that is going to re-ignite the fan base for this franchise."

That likely means that EA is looking to create either a downloadable game that isn't sold in stores or perhaps a free-to-play model that's similar to their work on Battlefield Heroes. Jon Van Caneghem is best known for creating the Might and Magic RPG franchise. He was also the co-founder of the MMO developer Trion World Network but left under somewhat mysterious circumstances earlier this year.

Electronic Arts' current restructuring, announced during their financial results last week, is going to cause the shutdown of Pandemic Studios. Gamasutra reports they have gotten a hold of an internal EA memo with the details. Under their plan, the founders of Pandemic (Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman and Greg Borrud) will leave EA with 200 other Pandemic team members. The remainder of the Pandemic team will be moving to EA's Los Angeles studios. The Pandemic brand name will apparently continue and new games based on previous Pandemic franchises are in the works.

Pandemic, centered in Santa Monica, California, was formed in 1998 and started out as a PC only game developer, working on games like Dark Reign II and Battlezone II for Activision. In 2000 they opened an office in Australia. Over the years they created a ton of titles including Mercenaries and its sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior, the first two Star Wars Battlefront games and more. In 2005 Pandemic merged with BioWare to form one big independent game developer. In 2007 BioWare-Pandemic was bought by EA for over $600 million. Pandemic's last game as a separate studio will be The Saboteur due for release on December 8.

Looks like GameSpot has the exclusive this time on a new PC closed beta test. It's for Electronic Arts' latest RTS title Command and Conquer 4. The multiplayer beta will let selected folks try out the new 5 versus 5 gameplay modes, the new units, the persistent leveling and more. However the beta is restricted to GameSpot's Total Access members which means that if you want in you will have to pony up at least a $5.95 monthly fee.

The site states that the beta will allow all GameSpot members, paid and free alike, to have access to the open beta test but that won't be coming until early 2010. So if you don't feel like paying a gaming web site a monthly fee you can wait a couple of months before access is granted. C&C 4 is due for release in stores on March 16.

One of the more interesting mixes of first person shooter and real time strategy was Command and Conquer: Renegade. The title, made by Electronic Arts' now defunct Westwood Studios and released in 2002, was highly anticipated but while it got good reviews for the most part it was not a huge sales success (in fact a planned sequel was canceled due to the low sales of the original).

For some time a Unreal Tournament 3 mod team has been working on Renegade X, which brings the multiplayer design of C&C: Renegade to Epic Games' shooter. But the recent release by Epic of the Unreal Development Kit has caused many mods to be re-released as stand alone games. Now it looks like Renegade X could be moving in that direction. In a message board post announcing the release of the latest UT3 mod version the development team announced that thanks to the UDK release, " . . . there is a great chance Renegade X will become a standalone game in the future." The announcement emphasizes the fact that this stand alone game will still be free to download and play due to EA's holding of the C&C game rights. Still fans of the original could be looking at a Unreal Engine 3-based version in the months to come. You can check out a gameplay trailer from the latest UT3 mod release after the jump:

[Via Blue's News]

Dragon Age: Origins has already made a mark in terms of its official downloadable content with publisher Electronic Arts stating that the new fantasy RPG has already generated over $1 million in revenue from its current DLC offerings. Now comes word that the new issue of PC Gamer magazine, now on newsstands, has an exclusive Dragon Age: Origins level made by the BioWare team on its magazine DVD.

The mini-campaign is titled A Tale Of Orzammer and according to a post on the game's message boards by BioWare's David Sims, " . . . .this is a short stand-alone adventure, not an expansion of the main game." He added, "It's just something put together in collaboration with the magazine as an example of the kind of content that can be made using the toolset." So don't expect this mini-campaign to have a lot of polish but it's still something fairly unique if you are a Dragon Age: Origins completist.

With rumors that Pandemic Studios might be one of the facilities shut down by Electronic Arts as part of their cost savings program, Pandemic's upcoming open world WWII game The Saboteur might turn out to be the final game from the developer that brought us Star Wars Battlefront 1 and II, Mercenaries 1 and II and more.. The PC version of The Saboteur is currently due for release on December 8 and now the game's official message board have revealed the minimal and recommended system specs for the game.

As you will see after the jump, the system specs, particularly for the recommended system. are a bit on the beefy side. We will soon seen if the game lived up to its promise in early December.

You can now add Battlefield Bad Company 2 to the list of upcoming games that will be supporting the new DirectX11 graphics API. The Tech Report has received an updated list of all the officially announced DirectX11 game titles from AMD which currently has the only graphics card that supports DirectX11.

The list of games and game engines that will have DirectX11 features has been growing slowly ever since the first titles were revealed a few months ago. Currently there's just two titles that support DirectX11; the RTS game Battleforge (via a patch) and the Russian and German versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat. The next DirectX11 game due in stores is the PC version of Dirt 2 which will ship on December 1.