Hasta La Gadget!

While SimCity won’t officially release until March, it turns out that eager gamers who may not be able to wait that long will be able to play a little bit of the new game later this month. EA Games and Maxis have announced that they’ll be hosting a beta throughout the weekend starting on January 25 and ending on January 28.

SimCity announced via Twitter that gamers will be able to play a “one hour slice” of the new game at any point during the four-day period. We’re not sure exactly if Maxis or EA Games have a particular section of the game that they’ll be handing out for beta testing, but we assume that the game will start from the beginning, showing you the tutorial and then giving you a little bit of time to explore the game on your own.

In fact, there’s a new SimCity video that was just uploaded today to YouTube, and it shows off the tutorial at the beginning of the game. So, if you can’t even wait until the 25th to see what it’s like, the video is your next best option until then. However, it appears that the video wasn’t uploaded by an official source, so who knows how long the video will stay up before it gets pulled.

Those interested in trying out the beta should head on over to the SimCity website and sign up. The full game is expected to hit shelves on March 5 for US gamers and March 8 for those in Europe. It’s important to note that the beta looks to be a closed beta, and while anyone can sign up, they most likely won’t let all gamers in.

[via Kotaku]

SimCity four-day beta starts January 25 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve already gotten a good look at Crytek and EA‘s upcoming Crysis sequel, and to say the least, we’re pretty excited for yet some more graphics-intensive first-person shooter action. We’ve already been giving a rather vague release window of February 2013 for the game, but it’s finally been announced that Crysis 3 will officially release on February 19 in North America, with a European release happening on February 22.

Also during the announcement, Electronic Arts revealed that they have signed on director Albert Hughes for a new online video series called “The 7 Wonders of Crysis 3,” which we covered earlier this morning. Hughes is known for directing From Hell, Dead Presidents, and American Pimp. The series will introduce players to weapons, enemies, locations, and gameplay features that will be featured in the upcoming game.

As far as PC requirements, we also covered that a few days ago, but to refresh your memory, the minimum system requirements include a DirectX 11-compatible graphics card with at least 1GB of video RAM, a “dual core CPU”, and 2GB of RAM (3GB if running Windows Vista). Also, you’ll need to be running at least Windows Vista (sorry, XP users).

Crysis 3 is available now to pre-order, and if you do end up pre-ordering the game, EA will give you a digital copy of the original Crysis to play through while you wait for Crysis 3 to release. It’s certainly not a bad deal, but it would be better if they offered both the original Crysis as well as Crysis 2.

Crysis 3 coming to North America February 19, Europe February 22 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Are you in the mood for a whopper of a rumor? Let’s hope, because we’ve got one here for you: anonymous sources tell Game Front that Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is about to be let go, and that current EA Sports boss Peter Moore will step in to take his place. It goes without saying that you should probably take this with a grain of salt (or five), but if this is true, it could mean huge things for Electronic Arts, which has been experiencing some stock price woes recently.

According to Game Front’s sources, Riccitiello was asked to step down from his position at Electronic Arts after the earnings call that took place on June 30. Apparently, the departure of Riccitiello and subsequent promotion of Moore is “not set in stone” yet, as EA’s board of directors still needs to vote on the change. However, tensions are rising at the Electronic Arts offices as the company’s stock price continues to fall.

John Riccitiello has overseen EA since his return to the company in 2007. It was under him that EA-published games began requiring online passes, and he was in charge when the EA Store was relaunched as Origin last year. Riccitiello is no stranger to controversy, as Electronic Arts was named The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America earlier this year.

The rumor comes just a day after Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter stated that Riccitiello had expressed concerns over being fired from the company. Pachter later followed-up by saying that though he was quoted accurately, he was merely kidding around. Perhaps he wasn’t so far off the mark after all?

[via Game Front]

Peter Moore to replace John Riccitiello as EA CEO? is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.