Hasta La Gadget!

Electronic Arts and Insomniac Games has finally announced a launch date for its upcoming 4-player co-op shooter, Fuse. The game is set to be released on May 28th in North America, and May 31st in Europe. The game will be available for both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. The game was expected to be released earlier, however it was delayed because there were still aspects of the game that needed to be “polished”.

Insomniac Games is well known for its other successful game series, Ratchet and Clank, and Resistance. While those games were PlayStation exclusives, Insomniac Games is changing things up by offering Fuse to both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers alike. Insomniac Games promises gamers that Fuse will offer a similar action-packed, gun-toting, bullet storming experience as seen in its other games.

In Fuse, you will play as a member of the elite contact team, Overstrike 9. You can choose to play either Dalton Brooks, Isabelle “Izzy” Sinclair, Jacob Kimble, or Naya Deveraux. Each character has their own “Xenotech” weapons and unique skills that will help them stop the evil corporation that has gotten its hands on the volatile energy source known as Fuse. If you decide to play the game solo, you can shift between characters in-game in order to fully utilize each member’s capabilities.

If you pre-order Fuse now, you can get access to a bunch of exclusive in-game items. You will given special armor and weapon skins for each of your charaters, and a special “quickdraw” perk that increases the damage of all one-handed weapons. The game so far has seen a fairly negative response from the gaming community. Many are upset that the game is coming out so late, and a lot of gamers are still very upset at how EA handled the whole SimCity fiasco.

[via EA]

Electronic Arts to launch Fuse on May 28th is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It seems like SimCity is just full of bad news. SimCity has received a lot of negative feedback for its ridiculous Always-On DRM feature. At first, EA stated that the Always-On DRM was added mainly because of security issues, but now its saying that it was added because the developers envisioned SimCity as “always-connected”. Lucy Bradshaw, the General Manager of EA’s Maxis label, stated that they had designed SimCity “with multiplayer in mind”. By having the always-connected feature, they were able to create essentially an MMO.

Bradshaw explained that they envisioned a game where cities would constantly be up to date. Players would be able to help each other out with supplies and services, send gifts to each other, promote trading in the Global Marketplace, and more. Simply, they wanted players to always be connected to each other. Even if players wanted to play alone, Bradshaw stated that they’d eventually want to play with other players.

Now here’s the part where everyone gets pissed off. Bradshaw says, “So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision.” Essentially, SimCity could have operated with both an online multiplayer mode, as well as a single-player mode that many of the series’s fans asked for. Bradshaw justifies her case by saying that there are “thousands” of people who love SimCity’s always-connected feature, a statement that has been debunked by thousands and thousands of other fans.

Obviously Bradshaw’s statement drew in a huge list of angry SimCity gamers. Many came out to call Bradshaw and the SimCity developers liars. They commented on how the “always up-to-date” trading services sometimes take up to an hour to update, and how even online saving is unreliable, with many players losing multiple cities due to an error in the cloud-based servers. The SimCity launch was a massive failure due to the Always-On DRM, and EA has experienced continuous PR damage since then. This may be the last nail in the coffin for the SimCity series.

[via EA]

EA lied about SimCity not being offline-capable is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Battlefield lovers rejoice. Electronic Arts and DICE are going to be holding a special event for Battlefield 4 on March 26th at 7:00 p.m. PST. The Battlefield 4 event will take place in San Francisco, California at the 2013 Game Developers Conference. The invitation, received by Gamespot, says, “Please join us to celebrate a new era of Battlefield.” Nothing else was mentioned on EA’s invitation.

So what do we know about Battlefield 4 so far? We know that EA is planning on releasing a beta for Battlefield 4 sometime during Fall. We also know that if you’re one of the players who purchased Medal of Honor: Warfighter (and considering its poor sales figure, there aren’t that many of you), you will instantly have access to Battlefield 4′s beta.

There are also speculations that EA and DICE may announce Battlefield: Bad Company 3 at their Battlefield 4 event. Battlefield: Bad Company 3 was spotted on LinkedIn from a user who “provided video game prototype, design, and demo feedback” on the game back in 2009-2011. Battlefield: Bad Company has done remarkably well in sales in the past, with Bad Company 2 selling around 6 million copies. And EA isn’t blind. It knows that gamers have been anxiously awaiting the announcement of a Bad Company 2 sequel.

The timing sounds about right for EA to announce that next chapter in the Battlefield game line. It had just launched the final DLC in its Battlefield 3 line-up, Battlefield 3: End Game. The DLC became available for PlayStation 3 Battlefield 3 Premium subscribers on March 6th, and Xbox 360/PC premium subscribers on March 12th. The expansion comes with 4 new maps, 2 classic game modes, more vehicles, more assignments, and more achievements. The DLC, combined with the other 4 DLCs should be able to keep Battlefield 3 gamers entertained until Battlefield 4 is officially released.

[via Gamespot]

Battlefield 4 event to be held on March 26th is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This past week the re-launch of the SimCity franchise was threatened with connectivity and crash problems galore – but according to the MAXIS label under EA Games, they’re almost in the clear. Speaking as General Manager for the MAXIS label this weekend for a widespread blast this morning, Lucy Bradshaw gave a tentative nearly-all-clear with an assurance that “the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us.” Bradshaw also made it clear how much she appreciates those who have stuck with the development team in this hour of panic.

When you’re creating a video game that’s released to the public, there’s always a moment of panic – or heart-clobbering anticipation when the final software build has hit the market. When that moment is over, you’re generally allowed to sit back and watch the sales numbers grow (or pan) while you take a much-needed rest.

For the creators of the 2013 edition of SimCity, there was just about enough time to have a glass of lemonade before they were struck with a spit-take at customer complaints across the board. As the game is based largely online, connectivity problems reported by customers from across the country were not a welcome wake-up call for this game’s creators.

The good news is that all is nearly well at this point, with “tens of thousands of new players” joining the game every day according to Bradshaw. She’s spoken up on how humbling it’s been to see the amount of confidence the gaming community has shown in the developers behind the game given the problems it’s had thus far, and has thanked the public endlessly for that faith.

Our biggest fear was that people who love this franchise would be scared off by bad reviews about the connectivity issues.

But you put your faith in us.  You bought the game with the understanding that we’d quickly fix the server issues.  For that support – that incredible commitment from our fans — we are deeply grateful.  As the general manager of Maxis, I want you to know that we cherish your faith in us, and the love you’ve shown for this franchise.

Thank you very much.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see the whole SimCity 2013 story as it’s rolled out over the past week and be sure to let us know how your experience is when you pick the game up yourself this week!

[via EA Games]

SimCity creators ask for faith as problems “almost” over is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

EA’s SimCity launched with disastrous results. EA wanted to prevent piracy of the game, so they added the Always-On DRM feature that would require players to login to its online servers in order to play their game. While the Always-On DRM feature is good for protecting against piracy, it resulted in an unmitigated login disaster for SimCity. Many gamers were unable to login, downloads were severely slow, people weren’t able to unlock their games, and many were unable to enjoy a game they’ve anticipated for so long.

Lucy Bradshaw, the General Manager of the EA Maxis Label, released an update to players about the stability issues with the game. So what was the issue? There were a lot more people logging in and playing the game than they had expected. She stated, “A lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in beta.” In order to remedy this problem, EA is increasing their server capacities. So far they have increased their servers’ capacity by 120% in the past 48 hours.

In order to ease the outrage from the SimCity community, Bradshaw has informed all SimCity gamers (who have activated their game) that on March 18th, they will receive an e-mail that will allow them to redeem a free game from the EA store. She didn’t release any more details about the “free game”, but we’re hoping it’s not just some $5 piece of junk that no one would want in the first place.

EA will be working to improve SimCity’s stability all throughout the weekend. This game had similar (albeit worse) launch issues like Diablo 3, a game that also requires you to login to an online server to play. Diablo 3 was down for hours while Blizzard was working on its servers. Hopefully EA’s free game will be able to win back the hearts of all of the gamers it angered. Now it just has to work on those 1700 1-Star Amazon reviews.

[via EA Games]

EA offers all SimCity owners a free game is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.