We'd think that a drop that fast and of that much doesn't bode well for Prince of Persia's sales, but we just work here. And Prince of Persia's not the only game being slashed right before the holidays. Ubisoft's EndWar and Far Cry 2 — the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions — have also been reduced to just $39.99.

Yikes. If this does reflect tepid sales — and not GameStop just throwing away twenty bucks per sale for kicks — we'd hope Ubisoft is one of the publishers reevaluating the timing of some of its 2009 releases.

Farcry 2/Prince of Persia Ps3 (maybe 360?) Price Drop @ GS - $39.99 [CAG]

And that's just the start. Eventually - tech and public interest allowing - the Endwar "universe" would act as the overarching Clancy universe, within which the storylines of each new Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and HAWX missions would be played out, ultimately leading to the direct linking of each game's campaigns.

Like I said, it's pie-in-the-sky stuff. Details are thin. But hey, even if you can't stand the thought of a Clancy-branded Katamari sweeping the globe rolling up piles of cash money, you have to admit, it's a pretty neat idea.

Ubisoft to merge Tom Clancy range into Super Game [Gameplayer]

From the sound of it, the strength of European currencies against the dollar has something to do with it. But Guillemot also says the market's growing because gamers are becoming "more accessible" to European games, and of course flacks Ubisoft titles as leading the charge. EndWar (out in October) features voice commands, for example. So will Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., out next year.

"A game like EndWar, for example, which you can control by voice - it's totally changing the industry because it gives you the opportunity to command what's happening, and to have a quick answer to the orders you give," he said. "And it's the same for a lot of other games, like the party games you can play - the games with guitars are also helping things to increase the fun, and bring more people. Because when you have fun with your family on the game, you take them into more games with you."

If Europe is indeed Ubisoft's biggest market, fine, I don't know their numbers. But this to me sounds like sour grapes for getting beaten up by U.S. critics and gamers, especially over its Wii titles, and more than a little justification for going so heavy on the casual stuff. Whether that's retroactive justification — or pre-emptive — bears watching.

Ubisoft: Europe is Now Our Biggest Territory [Gamesindustry.biz, via Joystiq]

The three gig download will feature three maps for 1v1 and 2v2 matches, but no offline play.

I hope they launch a public beta as well. As with most new ideas, the concept of voice-command mixing with real-time strategy isn't easy to wrap your head around without trying it first hand.

As I mentioned in my preview of the game earlier this year, it seems to work quite well and despite the reduced unit types, I think there's enough depth in the game to keep things interesting.

EndWar [Via Joystiq]

De Plater said that part of the impetus for the game was the fact that, as real-time strategies have evolved, the genre has left a lot of people behind. People like my dad, even people, in some cases, like me. People, basically, who aren't interested in dealing with a Zerg rush five minutes into the game and instead want to play something a bit closer to, say, a detailed and realistic game of chess.

"One of the things we hear a lot of us is 'I used to love real time strategies, but it's gotten too complex'," he said. "So we decided to make a tactical game, slow the pace down. We call this game strategy at the speed of thought."

While the developers put a lot of effort into both the game design and user interface to make it pick-up and play, that doesn't mean it doesn't have depth.

For instance, the game, due out on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this fall, only has seven unit types, such as anti-tank, tank, light infantry and helicopters. But there are about 300 upgrades for the units. And the units, which gain experience during combat, keep both their experience and upgrades from battle to battle on the game's more than two dozen maps. With that in mind, the game has the ability to evacuate units in the middle of battle. If you get them out before they die you can still use them in the next match.

All of the buildings in the maps are destructible. Nothing new, but EndWar has a fairly sophisticated MMO-ish online component that looks at the game's 40 territories at the end of each day and averages out the outcome of all the matches to decide which of the three factions won which territory.

So the pick-up-and-play isn't really about the game being easy as much as it is about it being accessible. A key component of that, of course, is the voice commands which allow someone to play an RTS on large maps on a console without getting frustrated. The voice commands let you manage the battlefield from any location on the map.

"One of the fundamental differences between a mouse and keyboard and this is the level of precision," de Plater said. "So a big part of the AI is that you give commands like a general.

"War should be a series of intelligence decisions."

In other words, you can't tell your units to take cover behind a building during an attack, only that they should attack, the rest is up to them.

Verbal commands are typically broken down into three steps. First you say the unit's name, then the order and finally the goal. For instance, to move a unit you just say "Unit three move to Yankee"

To create a group you say "Calling all gunships create team, red team."

To order a group to attack you say "Red team attack hostile one."

The game is surprisingly good at recognizing not just when you get it right, but even when you say it wrong. The main problem, De Plater said, is where people put the microphone. Too close and it can cause some major distortion issues.

The game starts off with a simple voice tutorial that teaches you, not the game. This way gamers' are taught what to say instead of teaching the game to learn a bunch of different ways to do the same thing.

After talking with De Plater a bit about the game, he handed over an Xbox 360 controller and headset to let me give it a go. Within minutes I was ordering troops around the battlefield mostly flawlessly. In fact, the few times I misspoke and used the wrong command, the game still knew what I was getting at.

The game felt an awful lot like a one-player version of World in Conflict to me. You don't have to construct units or bases, instead, you spend all of your times issuing commands and keeping an eye on the battlefield. The fact that you don't really use the controller for much more than moving around on the map or holding a button so you can talk to your online opponents, the game felt much more immersive than your typical strategy title. I felt as if I was viewing a battlefield from a far, issuing commands to my troops and watching, like one might a chess match, as my tactics and the tactics of my opponent unfolded.

Having said that, there are some potentially game-killing stumbling blocks. I didn't see any issues with the friendly AI while playing around with the game, but when you have zero direct control over your units if they get that wrong then the game is dead in the water.

I also really didn't play enough to get a sense of how challenging the game would be to play. A big issue, I think, is that Ubisoft can't make your units too smart. As many of you pointed out, you don't really want to play a game that essentially has you saying into a microphone "Get out there and kick some ass for me."

Finding the correct balance between no-neck, brainless AI and a self-reliant army of ass-kicking automatons has got to be tricky—and it's where this game will live or die, I suspect.

What does surprise me is that, at least based on my time with it, the unusual interface, using mostly your voice to control the game, won't be an issue at all. It seems both seamless and a function that actually adds quite a bit to the experience.

My excitement was quickly deflated when I realized that while the disc does have some neat EndWar stuff, it doesn't include a demo. Dammit! You do get the announcement trailer, a GameTrailers special about the game called "the future of war" and an EndWar sneak peek preview, featuring the Frag Dolls.

Sucks about the demo, but it's free and still a neat idea.

Ubisoft's news today wasn't all good. Sure Assassin's Creed is doing amazing sales and the company as a whole is picking up, but it appears they've decided to push back three of their triple-A titles.

Or as Ubisoft puts it they've "strengthened its line-up of games for next year..." EndWar, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and Far Cry 2 are now all scheduled for release in fiscal 2008-09 rather than the fourth quarter of 2007-08.

This will let them push the expenses of developing those games into next year's fiscals and push up sales for that fiscal year, from what I make of the press release. Good news for investors, but boo for gamers.

The single most exciting and surprising thing to come out of Ubiday earlier this month was news that EndWar is going to use voice command to try and deal with the problems that inevitably crop up when bringing a real-time strategy game to the console.

I had a chance to see the official trailer and talked for quite a bit with one of the developers for the game, but unfortunately the game wasn't actually on hand to see in action.

The most important question, of course, is how will the voice command work because if that's flawed you might as well toss the whole game in the trash.

The developer told me that the voice command will use a series of simple, easy to remember words to let you issue commands on the fly to your units. He called it strategy at the speed of thought. The software the company is using has been thoroughly tested with very few mistakes, I was told, and of course it is still in development.

The team has tested the game with several languages and several accents without running into problems and they hope to ship it in a single SKU, meaning that all of those languages and accents will be packed into one game.

While the biggest news about the game is the voice control, the team is also taking an interesting approach to graphics. They told me they want the game to look more like Madden than Command & Conquer, with a close over the shoulder view. The team said they felt it was very important that the genre be brought into the 3D world much like Knights of the Old Republic and Grand Theft Auto did for their genres.

Finally, the game will have a massive multiplayer persistent online campaign running at all times. The way it was explained to me is that the battles fought online for one side or the other will be constantly tallied and translated into the overall military successes of both sides of the war. This will, in turn, result in real-time shifting of battle lines. The goal, they told me, is to have a single instance, instead of multiple wars running in parallel.

I also asked about the unit types the game would feature. While not all of Tom Clancy's franchises would fit into a World War III game, the developers are trying to make sure the ones that do will make an appearance. So, in other words, you can expect Ghost Recon, but probably not Rainbow Six.

Everything I was told sounded very impressive and I think this game has enormous potential, especially with different franchises they can cherry pick from, but of course, as with all real-time strategy games, it's going to boil down to how it plays, how it feels, whether they strike the right balance, and in this case, whether that voice command actually works.

I'll keep my fingers crossed. Hit the jump for the game's official timeline. Brian Crecente

Global Timeline

2011: SLAMS Treaty Signed
The United States and the European Union sign the historic SLAMS (Space-Land-Air Missile Shield) Treaty, agreeing to co-develop technologies for comprehensive, interlocking anti-ballistic missile systems comprising dozens of space-based laser satellites, land-based interceptor missiles, and aircraft-mounted lasers. Left out in the cold, Russia accelerates development of its own land-based ABM systems.

2014: "The End of Nuclear War"
SLAMS goes live. The world watches as the US and EU launch test salvos against each other. The results are extraordinary: each nation's missile shield destroys 100% of the "dummy" missiles fired against it. The US and EU governments pronounce the End of Strategic Nuclear War, and on both sides of the Atlantic, crowds celebrate the advent of a new age of peace and security.

2015: Energy Crisis
Like toppling dominos, several major oil companies admit to having "overstated" recoverable oil reserves. For weeks the price of oil spikes to $200 dollars per barrel, and stock markets in New York, London, and Tokyo sink to their lowest values in 30 years. With world-wide energy production slumping, "energy security" becomes the explicit priority of governments around the world. Only Russia, already the number-one supplier of oil and natural gas in the world, benefits from the energy crisis, spending its surging coffers of petrodollars on a revitalized, technologically-sophisticated military.

2016: Birth of the European Federation
Largely in response to the ongoing energy crisis, nearly all of the EU's member states ratify the European Constitution and unite as a single national entity known as The European Federation (EF). The UK declines federation, but retains close economic and diplomatic ties.

2017: Standoff in Ukraine
Seeking to expand its territorial holdings, Moscow succeeds in pressuring Belarus to join the Russian Federation. Ukraine, however, refuses to knuckle under, and in a controversial referendum votes to apply for candidate status with the European Federation. Civil conflict (purportedly fomented by Russian agents) erupts and EF Enforcers rush in to restore order. Russia responds by rolling three tank divisions across the border and shutting down Europe's supply of oil and natural gas via the trans-Belarus and -Ukraine pipelines. After a tense standoff, all sides agree that Ukraine will retain independence for five years and then hold another referendum. Foreign forces withdraw, but an air of mutual distrust remains.

2018: The New Frontier
The United States announces plans to put the "Freedom Star," a massive space station co-administered by NASA and the US Air Force Space Command, into high orbit by 2020. This multi-purpose installation combines civilian projects such as alternative energy laboratories with military capabilities (defensive systems to protect the station against attack from anti-satellite missiles, and barracks capable of housing up to three companies of "space marines" able to deploy anywhere on Earth within 90 minutes). International reaction to this "American Aircraft Carrier in Space" is very negative.

2020: NOW
Three of the Freedom Star's modules have already been assembled in orbit. All that remains to be launched are the barracks and laboratory modules. Despite international protests, the US vows to go forward with the launch of Freedom-IV as scheduled.

Tom Clancy's EndWar will be playable using voice commands, Ubisoft unveiled at Ubiday earlier this month. The game will also have a controller option, but what's the fun in that?

The game will be developed by a new team made up of members drawn from a number of Ubi teams including ones that worked on Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell.

Set in a world populated by many of Tom Clancy's other franchises, EndWar will feature a battle view that can zoom in to a Gears of War like, over-the shoulder view and battles that can be fought both online and off.

Check back tomorrow morning for new screens and impressions based on my short interview with the development team. Brian Crecente

Just in case you were too lazy to follow our directions yesterday, here's the EndWar clips we found over at the JSF site straight from Game Trailers. What do you think? FPS, RTS, side-scroller? Brian Crecente

Looks like that mysterious JSF site is tied to EndWar after all. If you hop on to the JSF site now and click on the passcode button you will be asked to type in a password. Type in s9p1z6 in the box and hit enter.

That jumps you to a recording of a woman giving a future history lesson. In a nutshell: the world realizes peace in 2014 but then an oil shortage leads to a new cold war which moves to space and eventually turns into the EndWar, the final big war.

Throughout the audiocast an image of the EndWar logo is flickering in the background as well as a small EGM216 flickering near the bottom of the screen. Obviously, a reference to the upcoming issue of Electronic Gaming Magazine. I'm guessing we'll be learning a lot more from the mag about EndWar when it hits.

Moving around the blank space left after the audio and video runs, I noticing two blinking yellow dots which start up videos. One video shows a soldier running through some unidentifiable terrain, he looks a bit like the soldiers from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the other shows a sleek fighter dropping what appears to be a missile over some desert terrain.

I'm getting a little psyched, but I am a sucker for shooters. Brian Crecente

JSF

Looks like Ubisoft is going back to the Tom Clancy trough. Not that I'm complaining, so far I've loved all of the games based on Clancy's books.

EndWar, hitting "next-gen consoles" in the 07/08 fiscal year, will be set on the battlefields of World War III, though it doesn't sound like there's any book tied to this particular title.

The developers will be lead by Michael de Plater at Ubi's Shanghai studio, whose members also worked on Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell games.

"Our development teams are invigorated to be creating the first 100 percent next-generation Tom Clancy brand," said Serge Hasco t, chief creative officer at Ubisoft. "Our success with Tom Clancy franchises is unparalleled in the next-generation and Tom Clancy's EndWar will be a marvelous addition to the already critically acclaimed library of games. A strategy game like no other, EndWar will allow gamers to lead their own armies against hundreds of others online in real global locations on the massive battlefields of World War III."

The game will be shown off in the June issue of EGM, set to hit stands in early May. No word if this is connected to Ubi's JSF site, though I suspect it might. Brian Crecente

New Ubi Site Launches [Kotaku]