14 DAY TRIAL // When Electronic Arts announced that it planned to work with the very popular film director Steven Spielberg on two games, it hoped to achieve two goals. First - attract a new group of potential customers, those who were into movies but did not care for videogames; second - add a very recognizable name to its development team. It was a sign that EA was indeed moving towards creating new, interesting, innovative games, away from sequels.
Since then, Boom Blox launched and received very good reviews from critics. It failed to make a splash on the market, as it only sold about 450,000 copies until June, yet Frank Gibeau, the president of EA Games, thinks that it's a good number for a new game coming from an interesting collaboration. The title was launched for the Nintendo Wii and for mobile devices and there were hopes that it would be the first third party hit for the Nintendo gaming console.
Now Variety, through its Cut Scene blog, is reporting that a sequel to the game is in the works, its current title being Boom Blox 2. There's no word on whether Spielberg will be involved or that the game will have the same gameplay mechanics as the original, focused on knocking down towers made of different types of blocks. There's certainly room for variation within the original concept but it would be kinda sad to see a game which got high marks for originality turn into a series which stagnates in the creativity department.
The development of the new game does not mean that Steven Spielberg is not continuing his work on other projects at Electronic Arts. The director is said to help a team aiming to create a science fiction based action title code named LMNO and which is expected to arrive for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC.