Dragon Age Begins In 2009, Saboteur Slips

Dragon Age, the winner of multiple "Best of E3 2004" awards will indeed be shipping in the first quarter of 2009, according to Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. BioWare's role-playing game was loosely dated by the EA boss at the William Blair & Company Growth Stock Conference yesterday, backing up the previously hinted at release window.

Riccitiello also pegged Pandemic's World War II action game Saboteur for a pre-April 1 release, according to a report from GameSpot, missing its planned 2008 release. That's a huge blow to fans of shooting Nazis, but we hear that the Nazi shooting still needs more polish. You can't rush this stuff, folks.

Saboteur, Dragon Age slated for Q1 '09 [GameSpot]

Godfather II Will Have RTS-Like Features

More John Riccitiello at the William Blair & Company conference! This time, he's talking about the company's Godfather sequel, and what he's saying doesn't sound too bad at all:

You can play this game both at the street level, much like a GTA-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what's going on..

So...there are parts where you play, and parts where you command at a more strategic level? So...X-Com, with mobsters? Neat idea, if they can pull it off.

EA Talks "Godfather II" [Next-Gen]

John Riccitiello Has A Sulk Over EA's Review Scores

EA boss John Riccitiello is confused. Speaking at the *breath* William Blair & Company's 28th Annual Growth Stock Conference, he yearns for a day when Metacritic scores - for EA games, of course - were higher:

It used to be...All Metacritics were higher once upon a time because it was ten professionals rating them. Now, sort of anybody with a pen can rate them and it ends up with a bit of a wider track some times.

Uh, John? Think you got your Metacritics and your GameRankings mixed up. But hey, that's a simple mistake for the head of one of the industry's biggest companies to make. Totally understandable. What's a little less understandable is how he continues.

EA Ends Vancouver Torture Program

Electronic Arts bossman John Riccitiello had a lot to say at today's William Blair & Company conference. Earlier, he reminded us that the publisher wasn't just looking to grab Grand Theft Auto from Take-Two but for other stuff, too. Now, he gives us the good word on the torturing status of its Vancouver studio. The good news for those paying attention to the human rights abuses heaped upon the Need For Speed team is that their torment has been cut in half.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the Vancouver-based Need For Speed developers (pictured) have been slaving away on a brutal 12-month dev cycle for each entry in the series. Admitting that Need For Speed: Pro Street was just "okay", Riccitiello says that they've since added more staff, split the team in half, and put them on 24-month cycles, a winning formula that will hopefully make NFS: Undercover better than "okay." Congratulations to all involved.

Riccitiello: We were torturing Vancouver studio [GamesIndustry.biz]

EA Will Be Gaming's "One Great Company"

Interactive entertainment is going to determine one great company and I think it's this one. One of the reasons I've come back is to try to take it to the next step.

Games Are Bigger Than Movies? I Did Not Know

Movies, games, FIGHT! Electronic Arts' honcho John Riccitiello has his finger on the pulse of something and noticed that movie people are worried about big time video games. When not trying to take over Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take-Two, Riccitiello says:

There is more interest today from Hollywood to make movies out of our games than there is interest in our industry to make games out of their movies. There's a big reset happening now...

The buzz in Hollywood, which I heard from some Hollywood folks is people are worried whether Iron Man the movie is going to get killed by Grand Theft Auto the game. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.

Analyst Calls Bullshit On EA Being Rockstar's "White Knight"

EA really wants Take-Two. Actually, they mostly want Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto—and they want them now. EA CEO John Riccitiello certainly thinks that the swallowing of Rockstar would be good for the developer of Manhunt, GTA and Bully, telling the New York Times "We, in many ways, represent a white knight." The kind of white knight who can provide stability and exposure, assumably.

Analysts, though? They think that EA's full of BS. Janco Partners' Mike Hickey told GameDaily.biz that "My belief is Rockstar would be perfectly happy if EA never put a bid in at all." Hickey called Riccitiello's perception as Rockstar savior "bullshit" not to mention disrespectful to Take-Two management and its developers.

Other analysts had their say, including Michael Pachter, who noted that Riccitiello's "white knight" analogy was "perhaps a misplaced attempt to sound clever." Yep. Fightin' words.

Analyst: EA's Riccitiello 'Disrespectful' Towards Rockstar, Take-Two [GameDaily.biz]

Evil Acquirers Make Bid To Buy Taketooine

As an experienced Man of the Web, I was impressed with EA's quick snatching up of the URL EATake2.com, a site that highlights the numerous reasons why investors would benefit from an Electronic Arts buy-out of Take Two Interactive. But I'm doubly impressed by Lord Riccivader and the Evil Acquirers creation of EatTake2.com. It features a similarly impassioned plea to the people of "Taketooine" about the wonders that await them under new corporate rule.

Sure, comparing EA to the Galactic Empire has lost its shine, but seeing a Photoshopped John Riccitiello donning a Darth Vader helmet? That's gold, Jerry. Gold! The guest appearance from "Chatty" Mike Pachter makes it worth your page load.

EatTake2.com [via NeoGAF]

Road Rash Returns? Sounds Like It [Update]

Molyneux Says He Was A Bit Of A Prat

I was a bit of a prat back then, to be honest. To be fair, I think [EA] didn't do anything bad. I was just very immature, and I was coming to terms with not having 30 of my friends but instead having 200 strangers around me. That was difficult, and I made life difficult for them.

Drop In Metacritic Scores Makes EA Worried

In a conference call Thursday, EA seemed pretty worried about the low scores their games have been garnering on Metacritic. The average review score for an EA game has dropped from 77 to 72 over the last year, which EA CEO John Riccitiello says is unacceptable. While Riccitiello says he's not in the business of chasing numbers, those scores still have an impact on games.

Our core game titles are accurately measured and summarized by these assessments, and that is a very big deal.

He's got a point, too. I'm much more likely to see a movie critics don't like rather than pick up a video game critics have told me is terrible. Then again, it seems like video game critics hit the mark with game reviews more often than movie critics get it right.

EA concerned with low review scores of its games [GamePro.com]

Riccitiello On How Not To Blow It, The EA Way

Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA's most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it."

While Riccitiello was proud of his achievements at EA following his return to the company, he warned developers and publishers not to make some of the mistakes the company has made in the past. Those mistakes, he said, involved the stifling of creative talent and their ensuing departure.

Riccitiello took DICE attendees to school this morning with his talk on Game industry Economics 101. EA, like Activision, Sony, Microsoft, will continue to absorb developers, as it did with Bioware Pandemic last year. And that presents a danger.

EA: Black Friday Completed Console Transition

"It's been the longest, hardest transition in the history of the industry...Last Friday marked one of those points where you can say something's changed...Around the world, based on the data I've got, it was pretty clear that the transition is now over.

In the next five years, we're all going to have to deal with this. In China, they're giving games away for free...People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.

Probst Out, Riccitiello In As EA CEO