Electronic Arts E3 2009
Tonight We're Going to Rock It, Tonight!
It's hard not to be impressed by the number of licenses EA has managed to round up. And not just any licenses, but quality licenses. The once former leviathan of publishing seems to have taken on a very fresh look at gaming content, seeking to publish not just vanilla shooters, but taking chances on novel IPs like the highly anticipated (and pictured above...also highly) Tim Schafer game Brutal Legend, which was dropped by previous publisher Activision (who is now suing because they gave up their ugly duckling which became a swan). However, their press conference, while filled with exciting news and great game videos was similar to the tragic Nintendo conference in their equally depressing dearth of demo love.
Demo-less-ness aside, EA seems is packing a powerhouse of titles for the upcoming future, including updates to familiar franchises with Need for Speed: Shift, Madden 10 (presented by ex-m$ofty Peter Moore), the sweat-glistening Fight Night Round 4, and the return of the orgasmic rape simulator (don't worry, it's SFW) with Mass Effect 2. The truly great part was that over half of the games trailered at the conference were new IPs, including the God of War-like Dante's Inferno, RealTime World's cops & robbers MMO APB, Bioware's two new RPG's, the generic looking Dragon Age, and the freaking awesome looking Lucasarts collaboration, and first fully-voiced MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, GTA:Paris, also known as Saboteur, and of course Schafer's masterpiece Brutal Legend.
EA also showed off its new attempt to get people "fit" with Active, but I'll forgive them for that since despite being demoed at the Microsoft press conference, they are the ones publishing The Beatles: Rock Band. Check out the full video of the conference after the jump along with the reprint of my liveblog twitter feed.
Dustin Anglin