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EA have gone above and beyond the call of duty by offering those with defective Rock Band controllers a free game with their fix. The once unfortunate sods now get to choose the game of their liking from 14 EA titles. And they aren’t the crap you find at the bottom of the bargain bin either, but recent titles like Skate, The Simpsons Game and even another copy of Rock Band (no controllers though).

Those wanting to get in on the generosity will have to head over to this site by January 11th. Check after the jump for a full list of games.

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Last week my ears immediately perked up when they came across internet rumors suggesting a merging of the Command and Conquer series with the first person shooter genre. Today, a press release from EA has finally confirmed these rumors, along with the above screenshot as further evidence.

Hit the jump for details

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RewiredMind have reportedly spoken to an EA insider who confirmed that Rock Band will be released in the UK and Europe for the PS3, PS2 and Xbox 360 on March 6, 2008. No details regarding the price, or an Australian release date were mentioned.

If there’s truth to the rumour, importing the game will suddenly look a whole lot more appealing for PAL PS3 owners - with the standalone PlayStation 3 version of Rock Band readily available for dirt-cheap on eBay, and the game’s new-found compatibility with PS3 Guitar Hero III Les Paul controllers meaning anyone with any old USB microphone and a Les Paul can play two-thirds of the game for now and pick up the drum kit once they are available separately. I’d put money on it costing less than the PAL bundle all up, too.

Launch period shortages are becoming the norm in the gaming world, but we were still expecting Rock Band to be readily available in stores during the lucrative Christmas period - turns out, we were wrong.

EA president John Riccitiello delivered the bad news saying, “We won’t be able to put up enough inventory to meet the demand of this fiscal or calendar year” and added that those who don’t buy at launch “won’t be getting one for Christmas, unless you know someone at one of our retailers.”

Maybe it’s all hype, but with Guitar Hero III selling out, I wouldn’t count on it.

via Joystiq

Mega publisher EA has posted a second quarter loss of $195 million. This figure is in stark contrast to last year’s $22 million profit. EA attributed the figures to changes such as a change in the way they account for online sales - and while a loss was posted, their performance fared better than Wall Street’s earnings expectations.

I’m sure we can all look forward to more virulent in-game advertising now. Oh well, dinosaurs will die.

via MaxConsole

You’ve gotta love a good bit of drama and that’s exactly what we are still getting from the Rockstar/EA tiff. It seems the developers of The Simpsons game at EA are still very much bitter, as came to the fore in their appearance on Game Head. Here is Executive producer, Matt Selman‘s take on the events:

The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence… in a video game. Thats called irony… The people who make Grand Theft Auto, they spazzed out like little babies.

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Today Electronic Arts acquired VG Holdings Corp, parent company of developers Pandemic Studios and BioWare. Clearly acknowledging the talent lying within, EA parted with $860 million, making it the largest deal in their history.

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Thousands of PCs shut down today at the mere mention of the required and recommended specs for Crytek’s Crysis. EA and Crytek are claiming that the game will run on a 3 year old PC, this is true if you bought just about the best there is at the time - and don’t mind running it on the lowest settings. Here are the specs:

Minimum System Requirements
OS – Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor – 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster* (Vista)
Memory – 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card –256 MB**
Hard Drive – 12GB
Sound Card – DirectX 9.0c compatible

* Supported Processors: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or faster.

** Supported chipsets: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Integrated chipsets are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

Recommended System Requirements
OS – Windows XP / Vista
Processor – Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Memory – 2.0 GB RAM
GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar

As you can see the recommended specs suggest a pretty shit-hot PC by anyones standards. Expect hardware sales to skyrocket.

via Gaming Today

First it was that Halo 3 grenade throw, now check out this classic ragdoll moment in EA’s skate, courtesy of the game’s saved replay functionality.

EA via Gaming Today

Remember that kid in your class that constantly hung shit on everyone, then had a major sook when they got it back? Apparently they work for Rockstar Games these days.

What gives us that idea, you ask? Well, Rockstar Games have taken offense to the parody of Grand Theft Auto set to appear in Electronic Arts’ upcoming The Simpsons Game. According to lead designer Greg Rizzer, they had to remove elements of the level in question:

I was always under the impression that when you do parody, it’s a sign of respect… If we make fun of Grand Theft Auto, we’re not going to hurt the sales of Grand Theft Auto… But yeah, we’ve definitely had some reactions - we’ve had to pull stuff from the game.

He then went on to explain how this contrasts to the owners of other franchises parodied in The Simpsons Game:

I don’t know if you’ve seen Sitar Hero? We did Apu playing this 60-button controller and songs like Pour Some Curry On Me - we made this wonderful parody poster and the guys from Harmonix loved it and we sent them 20 copies of the poster. They just loved it so much.

via Destructoid