14 DAY TRIAL // John Riccitiello's talk at the William Blair & Company investor conference is still being scrutinized for snippets of information regarding the games that the biggest (until Activision and Blizzard merge) videogame publisher in the world is planning to develop and launch in the near future. Have I just said near future? I actually meant "far future" judging from the following information.
Electronic Arts' top man mentioned that the BioWare developed MMO people have been talking about for so long is actually not scheduled to come out until what EA calls "fiscal 2010", which, to us game playing mortals, is somewhere between April 2010 and April 2011. Which, in gaming terms, is "far future".
The news wasn't picked up earlier because Riccitiello did not specifically nominate BioWare as the developer, talking only about a MMO and Austin. The fact is that BioWare has an Austin studio where its MMO project is being developed - it is the only one in the area.
BioWare's boss, Ray Muzyka, says the title will deliver a lot of new stuff to the world of gaming and to that of MMOs, but refused to deny or confirm rumors that the project was based on intellectual property related to Star Wars, even if former LucasArts employees repeatedly said that they were informed that BioWare was doing a Force powered MMO.
Apparently, Riccitiello himself sought to contain such rumors by stating that the MMO being created in Austin by BioWare is "new" to Electronic Arts. You could take this at face value and conclude that BioWare is creating something entirely new, which has never been used before. On the other hand, a Star Wars based title would be new to Electronic Arts, as BioWare created the Knights of the Old Republic series before it was acquired last fall.