Electronic Arts (2)

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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EA and Crytek have announced that this year’s most anticipated title, Crysis, has gone gold. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek expressed his excitement:

“We are extremely proud of what we have been able to accomplish with Crysis. We wanted to push the boundaries both visually and with open-ended, non-linear gameplay and we believe the end result delivers that vision.”

Crysis is due out November 17th, and for those who just emerged from a cave, the demo was released over the weekend.

via Gaming Today

EA’s share prices have risen sharply with the company’s acquisition of Bioware/Pandemic. After the announcement the stock price rose $2.48 to a trading price of $61.17, a 52-week high. EA purchased the merged company from Elevation Partners for $860 million.

Interestingly EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello has close links with both companies as he was co-founder of Elevation Partners and CEO of BioWare/Pandemic parent VG Holding.

Bioware/Pandemic currently employ 800 staff.

via Next Generation

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

I always had the feeling that working for EA would be a bit of a drag, but now I’ve got photographic proof. It appears as if EA have got more nonchalant reps outdoors smoking at any given time than most companies even have in their booths.

Starting September 1st, Electronic Arts will begin pulling 18 “outdated” titles from their servers. Owners of most 2006, and even some 2007 titles, will be denied online play in a service updated which stated:

Servers for the games listed below will be shut down on the indicated dates. You may continue to play the games online up until these dates, but certain community programs may begin to close down prior to the shutdown dates.

Read on for a list of titles pulled.
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EA and Crytek announced today that Crysis will be available in North America and Europe on November 16. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli thanked fans for their support and patience, reassuring us that the E3 winner is “going to be worth the wait.”

More info after the jump.
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