electronic-arts posts

Electronic Arts has released a new gameplay trailer showing the Guadalcanal level of Battlefield 1943, the upcoming downloadable multiplayer shooter from developer Digital Illusions. The PC version of the game is due to be released in September following the console versions which will be available to download next week

Download the Battlefield 1943 Guadalcanal trailer (121 MB) at Big Download

Electronic Arts has released a launch trailer for their game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The game, based on the upcoming sixth movie in the fantasy film series (itself based on the novel by J.K. Rowling) is shipping to stores this week. You can also download a playable demo of the game right here at Big Download.

Download the Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince Launch Trailer (135 MB) at Big Download
Check out all of Big Download's Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince files

Like everyone else we were shocked and sad to hear about the premature death of Michael Jackson at the age of 50 last week. The news of his death was apparently enough to bring down parts of the Internet as tons of users hit news web sites reporting on his demise.

Since then the media has been paying tributes to Jackson's life with retrospectives, specials and the like. Those tributes are now extending to games. The just launched Battlefield Heroes free-to-play shooter from Digital Illusions and Electronic Arts is offering folks a chance to purchase some new in-game outfits for their characters. As you can see on the the right, those suits look an awful lot like Jackson's costumes in his 1980's music videos. The suits are just available for the month of July.

A Wild West shooter and a open world driving game are the highlights in the new PC game released this week:

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood: Developer Techland and publisher Ubisoft team up again on this sequel to the 2007 Western shooter. Play as one of two of the McCall brothers as they try to find the lost gold of Juarez while engaging in some six shooter firefights.

It looks like BioWare has given us a change to chase a wild goose. Earlier this week the BioWare Mass Effect 2 Twitter site announced that news on the long awaited second downloadable content pack for first installment of their sci-fi RPG series would be revealed this week. Well, as you can imagine no such news was actually revealed.

We don't know what happened but a updated "tweet" on the page from "Evil Chris" does say, "Due to circumstances beyond my control (me being stupid on timing), any news of more ME1 DLC will have to wait. Sorry folks." Earlier this year hints were given that the second DLC for Mass Effect 1 would involve some kind of battle arena but as Evil Chris said we will just have to wait longer to find out for sure.

We've already mentioned the fact that the sold out San Diego Comic-Con will have a bunch of game publishers exhibiting at next month's massive pop culture event. Now we have the first word on one of the game-oriented panels that will be held at Comic-Con.

On Friday, July 24, a panel on Star Wars: The Old Republic will be held with members of the BioWare development team talking about their plans for the highly anticipated MMO game. Look for a mini-comic based on the game to be given away at the convention and the Lucasfilm booth at the con will be showing the E3 CGI trailer based on the game on their big screen at select times.

Many players of Warhammer Online were shocked to hear of the departure of the MMO's lead designer and Mythic Entertainment co-founder Mark Jacobs depart the development team he helped to create. Now Jacobs is updating his personal blog site with a little more info about what happened. He states, "Early in May, Electronic Arts let me know that they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label and as a result of those changes I have been out of the office (and out of touch with the team, game, etc.) since that day." His departure was made public on Wednesday.

Jacobs takes time to thank the team at Mythic for all their work over the years but added, "if you are looking or expecting me to damn EA or anyone there, you will be sorely disappointed. Over my 23 years of making games professionally I have refrained from attacking the competition, former and/or current partners, other game developers, etc. except on a few very rare instances. I have no intention of breaking with tradition at the present time and I hope my track record in this regard remains unchanged for the rest of my career." So far he has not yet stated what he plans to to next.

[Via Massively]

One of the two major news items from Wednesday (the other being the whole id Software-ZeniMax Media dealie) was the revelation that Mythic Entertainment and BioWare would now be part of a new RPG/MMO division at Electronic Arts. The heads of BioWare are the new heads of the game division while Mythic co-founder Mark Jacobs decided to either leave or got kicked out the door (depending on what theory you believe).

Today the official community site for Mythic's MMO Warhammer Onine has a post from the game's producer Jeff Hickman. While most of the post deals with upcoming updates to the game he did address the changes that were announced Wednesday.

Hickman states, "We are committed to Warhammer, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot, and have solid plans for each game. I look forward to discussing our plans for of all of these games with you in the near future." At the end of his post he added, "The Winds of Change are upon us, but the ship and crew remain the same. As I've said before and I'll say it again, from myself and everyone at Mythic: Thank you for your continued passion and support. We look forward to the many months and years ahead...WAAAGH!"

With little to no fanfare, the "closed beta' test for Battlefield Heroes ended today, marking the official launch of the free-to-play shooter from developer Digital Illusions and publisher Electronic Arts. The game, which is set in a cartoon-style alternate universe where WWII apparently never ended, was supposed to be released last fall but the team delayed its release until today.

As we have reported before the game contains two playable sides, each with four character classes, along with four playable maps. While you can play the game completely for free you can also purchase "Battlefunds" that will allow you to add special clothing items for your character along with ways to level up your character faster.

Would you like to be a Pepper? Electronic Arts hopes the answer to that question is "Yes". IndustryGamers reports that EA has entered into a partnership with the Dr. Pepper soft drink brand for a multi-million marketing deal that will allow original in-game content to be added to a number of EA's games that is related to Dr. Pepper.

Not surprisingly, the first game that will get the Dr. Pepper treatment will be the just released The Sims 3. Exclusive Dr. Pepper in-game downloads will be made available for players by buying the soft drink and putting in codes that will be put on 500 million specially marked packages. The codes will allow Sims 3 players to gain access to items like "one-of-a-kind beach party items or all the elements of a perfect fall tailgating party." The Sims 3-Dr. Pepper deal will begin in 2010.