Electronic Arts

The shutdown of LucasArts by Disney early last month left many wondering about the fate of the Star Wars games. Disney had previously stated that their focus would be directed toward social games, and the with the demise of LucasArts fans wondered if all hope was lost. Who would save us from a sea of Star Wars Facebook and mobile games? Then an unlikely hero emerged. EA stepped in.

The announcement came yesterday to mixed reception. Some were optimistic, others were quick to point out EA’s reputation as the Consumerist’s Worst Company In America. On Twitter the #starwarsnextgen hash tag began to trend with ideas for new Star Wars titles, the majority coupling Star Wars Battlefront III with the Battlefield series engine, EA DICE at the helm. Others clamored for a new, non-MMO installment to the Knights of the Old Republic series.

Regardless of how you feel, it’s a very exciting time to be a Star Wars fan and a gamer. With LucasArts’ relatively poor showing the last 5-8 years there’s really only one direction Star Wars games can go. Up. So let’s take a few minutes to assess just why EA is a great choice for the franchise, and take a few more to note some potential caveats as well.

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This week’s deal offers up the seminal adventures of Mega Man on Xbox Live Arcade. Capcom’s Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 are both available now, through February 4, for …
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It has become commonplace in the video game industry for everyone with a platform for conveying opinions to announce the imminent death of one thing the moment anything that is competitive gains any real measure of popularity. Read the headlines any given week and you’re likely to hear about how a certain platform or company — or any other “thing” imaginable, for that matter — has been placed on the endangered species list by a party that is a position to directly benefit from its eventual extinction.

Nintendo says cheap smartphone games are strip mining the industry dry. Rovio counters that console makers are dead men, er, companies, walking. Some obscure developer of cheap phone games rips the Vita here. A creator of social or browser games says the traditional big-budget game development community that once scorned him is now a crumbling empire there. And round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. But it’s certainly not at the retail versus digital argument.

That’s why current Electronic Arts President and COO and former Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business CVP Peter Moore’s words at last week’s Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2012 Global Technology Conference felt somewhat out of the ordinary. Moore was more than happy to boast of EA’s $1.2 billion in digital revenues for fiscal year ending March 2012 that buoyed the company to a record total revenue of $4.2 billion in revenues.

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With the release of Renegade Ops earlier this year, the name Desert Strike was name dropped a lot. In reality the games aren’t all that similar, but the few times you get to fly a chopper around reminded many of the long forgotten series.

Most remember the first game in the series Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, which put players in control of an Apache attack helicopter. However there were actually five games in the series, with a sixth planned but ultimately cancelled (though it morphed into Future Cop: LAPD). The 16-bit era Strike games, Desert, Jungle and Urban were all fairly similar with the only changes being settings and the ability to pilot other (ground based) vehicles in the latter games.

With the jump to the PlayStation the core gameplay of the series remained the same but Soviet and Nuclear Strike boasted live action FMV. Of course this was all the rage at the time, usually looking extremely low budget and coming off as incredibly cheesy. While the FMV in the Strike games was a little cheesy and the acting slightly hammy, it was very well produced and often extremely effective. A lot of the praise goes to the fact they used FMV for everything, meaning you could look up videos on every enemy, weapon or mission objective. Even now we often have to trawl through a huge body of text to find out objectives or even learn how to play the game. Read More

Budget-conscious gamers curious to discover what all the Xbox Live Gold fuss is about can find out by taking it for a free test drive now through Sunday. …
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  There’s just one week to go until EA releases Klei’s Shank 2 on February 8, and they’ve dropped a new video properly introducing fans to the new multiplayer …
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Although Joe Flacco bore a striking resemblance to the living dead when his Ravens edged out the Texans in their AFC Divisional playoff game last weekend, that’s not actually him wearing a different jersey depicted in the above image. No, what you’re looking at is the Easter egg awarded to players for completing “Blitz Gauntlet” mode in the XBLA and PSN title, NFL Blitz. The unlockable zombie team is an obvious nod to the 1993 Sega Genesis classic, Mutant League Football.

Naturally, its inclusion has led to speculation over whether or not this is EA’s way of teasing a new Mutant League release of some sort. Kotaku’s Owen Good took it upon himself to investigate the matter; in doing so he discovered that a number of designers within the studio are indeed interested in such a project. This does not, however, in any way confirm that a remake or sequel is definitively on the way.

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  EA Sports confirmed to Kotaku today that their downloadable sports title, NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, will be the beneficiary of a roster update at some point …
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If you’re not in the US or surrounding countries and are looking for some hot American-style football action, you’re probably going to have to look somewhere besides NFL Blitz. …
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Xbox Live’s Major Nelson has unveiled that Electronic Arts’ new NFL Blitz for XBLA will be launching on January 4th, just in time to coincide with the NFL playoffs. …
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