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GC-Germany 2008 EA Press Conference

by Kevin Prince August 20th 2008 4:54 AM CDT0 Comments

Electronics Arts kicked off the first morning of GC2008. Olaf Coenen gave us a quick intro saying the conference was just about the games without any of the usual accompanying statistics (This is much appreciated at 9am). Peter Moore, having brushed past me moments before, then came on the stage to talk about his first year as head of EA Sports, and how it’s his aim to reinvigorate the brand.

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Out of EA Sports, they announced that a new tennis game is under development by EA Canada. The game is being designed to capture the excitement of the sport, and will exclusively feature the legendary Wimbledon ground. Next was FIFA 2009 Exec Producer Andre Wilson, he announced some new improvements for the latest version FIFA including:

•    10 vs. 10 multiplayer support
•    Exclusivity of Liaga’s 1st and 2nd divisions
•    Enhanced ‘Be A Pro’ mode
•    Custom team tactics
•    The general improvements game play one expects

The biggest inclusion is a new premium service sponsored by Adidas for 2008-9 called ‘Adidas Live Season’ which updates player stats in each week based of actual real world performance.

Following on from sports, we move focus to arguably EA’s so successful IP, it spawned its own division and that is the Sims. EA were happy to roll out the dev team to show off the games whole town approach to gameplay versus the traditional this is your plot of land and stick to it until we come out which some expansion packs route.
The game features a fully dynamic community, which adapts to the player as they create their sim’s and there home. The game is scheduled to ship worldwide on February 20th 2090 (ed. Sorry 2009). Before moving to more casual games, they wanted to show us an Afrika meets the Sims called ‘Sim Animals’.

Moving into the casual arena, we got shown games from EA Brightlight including Monopoly, Littlest Petshop, and the new Harry Potter game. Harry Potter got demoed by the Wealsey Brothers, which was met by much pathetic clapping.

Back on to more core titles, EA Games brought out all the guns, showing a good pre-roll of all the latest titles from the worldwide studios. After this Chris Corry Exec. Producer for Red Alert 3 came to the stage and introduced us to some of the actors for the cinematics they include JK Simmings as the US President, Tim Curry as the Russian president and George Takei as the leader of the Rising Sun. The actresses also pack a punch lead by ex-playboy star Jenny McCarthy. All of these actors where then brought together in a great cinematic trailer.

The rest of the conference, consisted of developer walking out trailers for Rage, Warhammer Online, Dargon Age Origins and Need for Speed Undercover. Before Olaf brought proceedings to a close.

We will have hands-on with some of these titles soon!