pandemic-studios posts

A lot of folks thought we might get an official announcement of Star Wars Battlefront 3 at last night's Video Game Awards. But the action game sequel, still not officially announced by publisher LucasArts, might still be in play. Fan site Battlefront3.net claims they got an email from a casting director Chris Marazzo who told them, " . . . Battlefront 3 is also in development. It was by far the most fun and coolest casting I ever worked on."

The first two games in the Battlefront series, developed by the now shut down Pandemic Studios, were highly successful in terms of sales. Free Radical Design was supposedly working on Battlefront 3 but LucasArts is rumored to have pulled the game from the developer last year. The developer was close to shutting down before being acquired by Crytek.

Looks like the PC release of The Saboteur is giving some folks problems. Specifically owners of ATI Radeon-based PC game rigs are reporting issues running the open world WWII action game from Pandemic and EA with Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.

Pandemic's official message board states that the team is aware of the issue and "are working as fast as possible to find a solution." They do have a workaround that will allow people to play the game but at a huge cost; you will have to turn off all but one of your PC's CPU cores. The post offers up exactly how to do this for your PC if you are so inclined but this is obviously a pretty drastic measure to take.

It's the start of a new work week and more importantly it's also time for another PC game available on IGN's Direct2Drive download service to be put on sale as part of their 24 Days of Christmas promotion. From now until 1 pm Eastern time on Tuesday you can purchase and download Lord of the Rings: Conquest for just $9.95.

This is the last game in EA's series of titles based on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies and the second-to-the-last game developed by Pandemic Studios. The action game pretty much got buried and forgotten when it was released by EA in early January of this year.

Last month, Electronic Arts shocked many in the industry when it announced deep layoffs in the publisher. That also included the shut down of its developer Pandemic Studios in Santa Monica, California. EA had purchased Pandemic (along with BioWare) just two years ago for a ton of money. Why shut down the offices now? Kotaku reports that EA's CEO John Riccitiello said a big reason was money. According to him, "For good or for bad, we are taking down headcount in California because it is really expensive."

He states making games in California has turned into a costly proposition compared to other parts of the world and that it didn't make economic sense to have Pandemic located just 10 miles away from EA's large Los Angeles studio. Some of Pandemic's team members have since moved to EALA where they are working on games with the Pandemic brand like the just announced Mercs Inc.

Earlier today word got out that the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of The Saboteur would be getting a "Day One" DLC update. The WWII action game from Pandemic and Electronic Arts will let folks who buy the game at retail stores download "The Midnight Show" which has some new locations in the game's city of Paris along with a new mini-game. It also unlocks an option to allow . . . nudity. Yes, nudity.

However, this time the PC owners of The Saboteur don't have to do anything to get the content that the console versions have to download. A "tweet" on the Pandemic Studios Twitter page states, "DLC comes on the PC disc already. No download needed." Yep, that means you can get your naked girls fix right from the start when the game ships to stores on December 8.

[Via Shacknews]

Gallery: The Saboteur

In what has to be regarded as a very quick turnaround, Electronic Arts has come on out and admitted that Mercs Inc is indeed in development at its Los Angeles development studios. The game, also known as Mercenaries Inc, will be the third game in the action series that was originally developed by the now shuttered Pandemic Studios. The official word came just a few hours after a leaked trailer showing off gameplay hit the internet.

EA's press release on the game has little info on the title itself, nor any word on the game's platforms or release date. It did hint strongly that the Pandemic name would be used in the branding of the game when it is released even though the team of former Pandemic developers is working out of EALA now.

The shut down last week of Pandemic Studios' Santa Monica offices is not supposed to be the end of Pandemic itself or the original brands that the developer, through Electronic Arts, still owns. Which is why the above and supposedly leaked video might actually be made into a full game one day.

Web site Bitmob states that the above video, supposedly showing off a multiplayer-oriented entry in Pandemic's Mercenaries series called Mercenaries Inc, is real. Their anonymous sources says the trailer itself was made a few months ago at Pandemic. As for the game itself, the site claims that the title is still in pre-production at EA's Los Angeles studio and being made by the few ex-Pandemic staffers that made the transition to their new EALA offices. Even if all of the above is true it will likely be some time before the game itself is released.

We really do feel for the Pandemic Studios team members who lost their jobs last week thanks to EA's latest cost cutting move. It's not right that the studio that has made so many great games is basically no more. But geeze....what did that copier ever do to you?

Yeah, yeah . . . we know that the YouTube movie that we can see above this post is supposed to be a "homage" to Office Space, complete with the same gangsta rap music (which by the way is definitely NSFW). But the copier doesn't seem to be the thing to attack in this case. How about a nice EA logo bashing? Or maybe some other object directly linked to the studio shut down? Beating a copier to death just seems so . . . cliche. However the movie is still funny and we guess that, in the end, that's what matters.

[Via Kotaku]

Pandemic Studios' life as a separate game development studio came to a swift end earlier this week with the reveal that its owner Electronic Arts was shutting down their Santa Monica-based offices and laying off 200 of its workers. While EA has said the Pandemic brand name and its franchises will live on, the last game to come from their original offices will be the WWII action title The Saboteur.

Late on Friday, the dev studio's community manager posted on their message boards that " . . . . The Saboteur has officially gone "GOLD" on all 3 planned platforms (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 & PC)." The game is still scheduled for a December 8 release date here in the US (Europeans get the game a few days earlier on December 4). As the community manager admits, "This has been a very difficult week for Pandemic Studios, but does not change the fact that a team of amazing people worked very hard to make The Saboteur a great game that fans will be able to enjoy this holiday season." We are hoping the last game from their studio is good as well even if EA seems intent on not giving it a big marketing push.

[Via Joystiq]

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.