Electronic Arts to Develop Game Based on Dante's Inferno

Electronic Arts is definitely a busy company these days, shipping out a lot of great games which have been eagerly anticipated by fans, like Dead Space or Red Alert 3. While EA's holiday season lineup of games is very strong, possibly one of the best ones in a few years, it is looking into the future and already has under development several other titles.

We recently reported that its president, Frank Gibeau, stated that projects like Dead Space, with animated movies or comics already planned from the beginning of the development process would be replicated with other new game ideas. Such an idea is a game based on the historical work of fiction Dante's Inferno (created by Italian writer Dante Alighieri as part of his master opus, The Divine Comedy).

Although details are very scarce, the presumed title will be Inferno and it will be set out in, where else, hell, with the player fighting huge numbers of demons in his attempt to escape the devil's world. Some EA sources told Variety that the game would be a modern day interpretation of the 1308 poem, but no other pieces of information have been revealed about the future game, which might be done at the end of the next year.

Even if the game is still heavily under development, EA appears to have already stated that it would sell the movie rights of this upcoming title to the highest Hollywood bidder. This announcement sparked a bidding war between some of the biggest studios in Los Angeles like Paramount, Universal, MGM and New Regency, which are fighting over the chance to develop a movie based on the Italian poem and the possibly upcoming game.

Although it does sound very nice that EA has begun developing fresh games and Intellectual Properties, a game based on Dante's Inferno isn't something most developers in the field would have thought of. Only time will tell whether EA made the right choice with this project, but considering the huge resources the company has, it might just pull this game off.