• 16Nov

  EA: What are our highest rated Metacritic games this year?

  Games 10 Comments

  

  John Riccitiello, (EA CEO), has been dedicated to ensuring EA game quality consistently rises and that gamers get the highest quality games from EA.

  How is this judged?  Many commentators go by Metacritic ratings.  As any of you know, Metacritic is not an exact science, some would point to idiosyncrasies in its calculation, but there can be no doubt that companies use Metacritic review scores as a general benchmark to judge a games quality, (Metacritic is a web site that pools a number of review scores, weights them and then publishes an overall average review score, hence testifying to a games perceived quality, as seen by reviewing journalists).  Any score above 80% is deemed to be a strong score.

  So let’s use Metacritic to see which have been EA’s strongest performing games this past year, (starting with the highest Metacritic score and descending).  (This is based on Metacritic data and does not represents units sold).  Metacritic ratings correct at time of publishing this blog article.

  As you can see.  EA has produced some great games this year….with many still yet to come….here’s the highest rated…….

  EArl

  Left for Dead 2                        X360                92%

  

  Dragons Age                             PC                   91%

  

  FIFA 10                                                  PS3                         91%

  

  Beatles Rock Band                             X360                89%

  

  Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box         X360                89%

  

  NHL 10                                                PS3                 88%

  

  Fight Night Round 4                            PS3                 88%

  

  Boom Blox Bash Party                       Wii                   86%

  

  The Sims 3                                          PC                   86%

  

  Madden NFL 10                                  PS3                 85%

  

  Skate 2                                                X360                84%

  

  Battlefield 1943                                   PS3                 84%

  

  Need for Speed Shift                          PS3                 84%

  

  Brutal Legend                                      X360                83%

  

  NCAA Football 10                               X360                83%

  

  Dead Space Extraction                      Wii                   82%

  

  Henry Hatsworth in Puzzling Adven   DS                   82%

  

  EA Sports Active                                Wii                   81%

  

  Mirror’s Edge                                      PC                   81%

  

  Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10                 PS3                 81%

  

  NBA Live 10                                        PS3                 81%

  

  © 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners

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  Tags: EA Quality Games, John Riccitiello, Metacritic

• 16Nov

  EA welcomes Playfish to the family

  Industry News, News in General, Social Media Gaming 1 Comment

  

  We were very excited to announce last week that EA had acquired Playfish™, a leading creator of social network games. The acquisition accelerates EA’s position in social entertainment and strengthens its focus on the transition to digital and social gaming. Playfish will operate within EA Interactive, a division of EA focused on the web and on wireless.

  To understand more about the acquisition, I provide the official news release that announced the deal.

  ‘EA has acquired Playfish for approximately US$275 million in cash and approximately $US25 million in equity retention arrangements. In addition, the sellers are entitled to additional variable cash consideration, up to a maximum of US$100 million, contingent upon the achievement of certain performance milestones through December 31, 2011.

  “Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community, is seeing tremendous growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our participation in this space,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA Interactive. “EAi has been successfully leading the charge for EA, and with the addition of proven expertise from Playfish, their broad consumer base and strong game brands, we’re moving ahead aggressively in our plans to lead in the category of cross-platform social entertainment.”

  “The industry is undergoing dramatic transformation and joining EA is the ideal opportunity for us to push forward our goals to lead in the social entertainment evolution on a faster and much larger scale,” said Kristian Segerstrale, CEO and Co-founder of Playfish. “EAi’s vision and entrepreneurial culture are consistent with our own, and together, we are in position to be the company that defines new and innovative connected experiences that will change the way people play games.”

  Playfish is one of the world’s largest and most respected social gaming companies with more than 150 million games installed and played worldwide on platforms such as Facebook®, MySpace™, Google™, Bebo, iPhone™ and Android. Playfish currently has over 60 million monthly active players across its ten titles – including Facebook hits Pet Society, Restaurant City, and Country Story – driving more than 1 billion game play sessions every month.

  EAi is a division of EA focused on digital business, including EA Mobile™, Pogo™ and social gaming. Pogo is the #1 casual gaming destination in audience engagement across North America and Europe. And EA Mobile is the world’s #1 mobile games publisher with 34% market share in the U.S., and the leading games publisher on Apple’s App Store with such Top Paid Apps as Rock Band®, Madden NFL10, The Sims™, and Tetris®’.

  

  © 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners

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  Tags: EA Interactive, Playfish

• 16Nov

  Keeping Bad Company?…..time to go back to the Battlefield

  Games 1 Comment

  

  YES!  Dont’t you just Battlefield!

  Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is on the way.

  Set in the near future, the Battlefield: Bad Company single-player campaign drops gamers behind enemy lines as part of a squad of four soldiers – risking it all to go AWOL on a personal quest. Featuring a dramatic storyline flavoured with attitude, Battlefield: Bad Company leads gamers far from the traditional frontlines on a wild ride with a group of renegade soldiers who decide that sometimes the gratitude of a nation just isn’t enough.

  The Battlefield: Bad Company cinematic single-player experience captures the freedom and intensity of the Battlefield series’ multiplayer sandbox gameplay in a dynamic world where nearly everything is destructible. Players have total freedom to be daring and innovative, adapting to and tackling challenges in unexpected Battlefield-style ways. Create sniping positions by blowing out a piece of a wall or drive your tank straight through a small house. The ever-changing battlefield forces players, their teammates and enemies to react accordingly.

  The game also features the all new, objective based multiplayer game mode “Gold Rush”, supporting 24 players online. Play as attackers and defenders and make full use of the tactical destruction as well as the unique vehicle experience of Battlefield: Bad Company.

  Battlefield: Bad Company is the first game built from the ground up for next-generation consoles using DICE’s bleeding-edge Frostbite game engine, delivering unrivalled graphics, effects and gameplay.

  Take a look at the multiplayer Beta below on this awesome video:

  And limited edition unlocks on this video here:

  EArl

  Some more screenshots for you to enjoy………

  

  Continue reading »

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  Tags: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

• 16Nov

  A look into Mass Effect 2……

  Games No Comments

  

  As requested, by many of you, latest screenshots from Mass Effect 2. 

  

  

  

  Continue reading »

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  Tags: Bioware, Mass Effect 2

• 16Nov

  Those who work in Hell…..

  Developer Insight 2 Comments

   

  Following in our profile series, we continue to introduce you to more members of the Dante’s Inferno Team.

  First up, let’s introduce you to the latest member of the team to be profiled.  Rachel Mina Cross.

  

  Title: Lead Lighter

  What is it you do here on Dante’s Inferno?
  I work with a talented team of six lighters who along with the VFX team add to the final look of the game.

  What’s a typical day for you here at EA?
  I get in and attend morning dailies, head to the gym at lunch. My afternoons will include Lighting reviews, meetings, updating Lighting schedules and any work that I do at my desk is essentially adding lights to Dante’s path to lead him deeper and deeper into hell!!

  What do you enjoy so much about Dante’s Inferno?
  The creative background environments and amazing concept art for this game makes my job so much fun!!

  Where do you belong in hell?
  Gluttony – I crave cake and other yummy snacks! Especially around 3pm:).

   

  

  Name: Greg Reisdorf

  Title: Level Designer

  What is it you do here on Dante’s Inferno?
  I get to make the levels of hell! From the initial concept (based on the poem, of course) to the super secret hidden cambers that only 1 gamer in every 1,000 will find. I get to come up with ideas, put them in a computer and make them come to life. I also get to find out how bad most of my ideas actually are, it takes a lot of iteration and play time to get things right. However there are some ideas that are just no good at all. That’s when you have to know how to kill your babies, and where better to do that than hell. I’ve killed a lot of my babies… most were disfigured and mutilated from the start. But some I nurtured and tried to raise. But at the end of the day if you don’t kill that bad baby then someone else, generally a producer(baby killers), will. So I create levels by killing my babies.

  What’s a typical day for you here at EA?
  Since we are close to finaling the game my days currently go a little like:
  1) Get in, get coffee
  2) Review one of my levels with the other departments and leads
  3) Try to fix any major issues from the review
  4) Lunch
  5) Coffee
  6) Keep trying to fix stuff
  7) Get tired of fixing stuff and play the game.
  Coffee
  9) Fix some more stuff
  10) Help someone else fix something I broke a long time ago.
  11) Think about adding something cool… get my baby killed… go back to fixing stuff
  12) Help someone fix something that I just broke when I was trying to fix something else.

  What do you enjoy so much about Dante’s Inferno?
  The carnage and the variety in the levels of hell. There is a ton of awesome background information and great ideas that we get to pull from when creating the gameplay spaces, scenarios and puzzles.

  Where do you belong in hell?
  I’m pretty sure I would be sent to Greed.

  Before we sign off from the team.  Take a look at the latest Developer Insight Video…Heresy. 

  
   

  The Dante’s Inferno art leads standing at the Gates of Hell, at the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

    

  

  

  © 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners

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  Tags: Dante's Inferno, Visceral Games

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