14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts was pretty busy yesterday as it announced that it would be publishing a wide array of high profile videogames in the coming 12 months while also showing signs that it was returning to a profit, albeit pretty slowly.
The company is saying that in the final quarter of 2010, something it is talking about as “The Sims 3 on Console Title” will arrive, probably on the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the Nintendo Wii, while Dragon Age 2, which is set for the PC, gaming consoles and handhelds, should come during the first quarter of 2011.
The Sims 3 was the best selling videogame on the PC in 2009 and it is very popular with people who are not interested in other Electronic Arts franchises, which means that getting it onto gaming consoles will attract a larger number of customers. The problem will be in translating the complex controls of what is essentially a PC game to the limited numbers of inputs available on game controllers. A Nintendo Wii pointing system might be the best suited to a console The Sims 3.
Dragon Age 2 is also a pretty surprising announcement, considering that the first game in the series, Origins, arrived just in the autumn of last year, and that BioWare is committed to delivering The Awakening expansion at some point during March, introducing another hefty chunk of story for fans to devour. A proper sequel, with an improved engine and with a storyline, which connects to that of the Warden from the first iteration, will probably take a bit longer to develop, so expect Electronic Arts to start offering more details as fall approaches and to even push it back a couple of months.
The EA announcement also referenced a shooter project from Epic Games initially mentioned back in 2008, and which has never been detailed. Apparently, more news about it will be coming this year.