EA Press Conference Highlights

The second press conference of E3 is now over, with Ubisoft’s on the way in just 40 minutes! EA’s conference showed us 11 games all over the demographic board. Starting with my favorites, here are highlights!

The last game shown, the one seemingly meant as a bonus round, was Bioware’s “The Old Republic,” their upcoming Star Wars MMO (currently expected Spring 2011). Their reveal for this game has been the turning point for my anticipation of this game. Before now, I’ve been expecting to pass on this game. But, the first thing they said on stage about this game was clearly directed at me - players will have their own space ships. The potential here excites me a great deal. Interplanetary travel, space combat, sharing ship space with friends - these are details I’ve always wanted to see in a decent MMO. If this turns out to be more than a glorified storage house, I will be very happy.

Dead Space 2 got a gameplay video and a release date, January 25, 2011. Apparently, this sequel takes place in a city, and looks as scary/disturbing as ever. The Dead Space team plans to show more at Sony’s conference tomorrow.

A whole bunch of first person shooters were shown: EA’s revival of the Medal of Honor series (going into multiplayer beta June 21), an expansion to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (set in Vietnam), Crysis 2 (with some 3D support), and Bullet Storm, the new game from Epic. They also introduced a service called Gun Club, meant to add some online features to your FPS playing.

EA Sports showcased a lot as well, most notably EA Sports Active2, to be released on 360, PS3, and Wii, making use of all that new motion control.

Aside from those highlights, they mentioned that Sims 3 would be coming to consoles, and gave the former heads of Infinity Ward a shout out.

I’ll update this article soon with some links to trailers. Given that Old Republic news, it may be time to do a full article featuring the game as well - look for that in the future.