tiberium posts

We knew this announcement was coming for some time but this morning Electronic Arts made it official with its Command and Conquer 4 press release. The announcement, which comes with some concept art (shown above) calls the game the conclusion to the Tiberium saga that began with the very first C&C game. Yes we will finally see how both the GDI and Nod will react when the alien Tiberium substance is close to making Earth unlivable.

The game will contain features that were hinted in an earlier survey that EA sent out to players such as class-based gameplay, mobile bases and a new objective-based multiplayer mode. Of course there will be full campaigns for both the GDI and Nod which can be played n both solo and co-op modes. The game, from EA's Los Angeles dev studios, is due out sometime in 2010.

One of Electronic Arts' major in-development games has been put to pasture. That game is Tiberium, a tactical strategy-shooter game set in the traditional Command and Conquer universe. Announced with much hype via a Game Informer cover story early in 2008, Tiberium was being handled by EA's Los Angeles studio for a planned release this fall. However the game seemed to get in development trouble from the start as EA did not show it in any of its 2008 press events nor at last July's E3. A couple of months ago, EA execs announced the game's delay to their fiscal 2010 time period.

Rumors of the game's cancellation first appeared in last month's Game Informer magazine. At the time of the magazine's story Big Download emailed EA PR reps for confirmation who at that time told us the game was still under development. However Kotaku has posted up what they say is an internal memo from EA confirming the cancellation of Tiberium. The reasons are simple, according to the memo: "The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn't coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers."

The memo also states that "this action will result in several individuals on the team being released." Exact numbers were not mentioned but the memo does state EA will try to place those affected team members within other projects at EALA or other studios within the publisher.

Early in 2008, Electronic Arts announced plans to publish Tiberium, a new sci-fi tactical shooter set in the standard Command and Conquer universe (C&C previously tried to enter the FPS genre with Command and Conquer: Renegade). The game was first announced in Game Informer magazine with a fall 2008 release date but since then little to no info on the game has been announced.

Today during EA's quarterly conference call with investors, company execs announced that Tiberium's release date has been pushed back to the publisher's 2010 fiscal year which actually begins on April 1, 2009. No reason for the delay was mentioned. Tiberium was completely absent from EA's E3 game line-up earlier in July.