The new game is in development at EALA, the studio where a core group of Pandemic team members were relocated following last week's closure of Pandemic's offices and departure of its top executives.

EA offered no gameplay detals, release date or platforms for the new game.

The existence of Mercs Inc — which EA refers to as a "working title" — first surfaced yesterday on website Bitmob, which ran a video of the in-development game and referred to the game as a multiplayer project.

The video showed classic shoot-em-up-for-cash Mercenaries paramilitary action, though it did not display much of the environmental destruction that was the original trademark of the series.

"We are very excited to announce a new instalment [sic] in the popular Mercenaries series because it demonstrates our continued commitment to Pandemic's rich catalogue of intellectual properties," EA group general manager Nick Earl said in a statement. Last week, Earl had the less pleasant duty of announcing the fate of Pandemic to EA employees.

Earl noted that a "core creative team is forging new ground and conceptualizing new ideas for this exciting franchise."

The first Mercenaries was released in 2005, developed by Pandemic and published by LucasArts. A sequel, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, was released last year, again developed by Pandemic but published by new studio owners EA.

[UPDATE: EA declined to provide any more details about when the game is coming out our what it will be about. As for whether the company announced Mercs Inc today as a reaction to the leaked video of the game that surfaced online yesterday and started the rumor of its existence, an EA spokesperson said, "We don't comment on rumors." The company has not responded to a follow-up regarding whether anyone who worked at the Pandemic offices as of last week is currently involved in the new project.]

The game has not been announced and is apparently being prepped at EA's Los Angeles studio. Mercenaries was previously developed by Pandemic Studios. There is no longer any Pandemic Studios. About two dozen or so former Pandemic developers, Bitmob reports, are working on the project at EA LA.

Mercs Inc. looks to be a "multiplayer sandbox game" — no word whether or not it has a single player campaign.

Leaked Video: Multiplayer Mercenaries Sequel [Bitmob]

Riccitiello also re-confirmed that Dead Space and the soon to be released Mirror's Edge would be further franchised but were "not likely to be annual sequels." Same for Spore, which will see new expansion packs and "new business models." Let's just hope all this franchise success doesn't put the kibosh on the company's drive for new IP.

Mercenaries 2 Co-Op Hands-On [IGN]

So who the hell is Ultizen, you ask? Ultizen is one of those mysterious outsourcing companies, based out of China, that basically have their hands in many different gaming pies at once. They do everything from concept art to full-on programming to porting, providing services to everyone from small indie outfits to the big names in the industry. It helps to think of them as game development mercenaries. They're the A-Team of the gaming industry, and they love it when a financing plan comes together. Hit the jump for the full press release.

Ultizen Games Secures $6 Million in Series B Financing
— Funds Will Be Used for Continued Rapid Expansion Through Acquisitions—

SHANGHAI, China & LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Ultizen Games Ltd., a game development and outsourcing company, announced today that it has secured $6 million USD in a Series B funding round led by Taiwan-based venture capital firm PAC-LINK, with participation from Japan-based VC firm Japan Asia Investment Co. (JAIC) and CyberAgent, a leading on-line advertising agency and media representative company. The Series B funding will be used to support company’s continued rapid growth through acquisitions. Ultizen’s North American offices are located in Los Angeles.

Ultizen closed a $1.5 million USD Series A round of financing from Shanghai and Boston-based Dragonvest Partners in late June of 2007, and grew from 70 to 350 employees within the company’s first year of operation.

With the largest talent base in China, reliable security to protect client intellectual property (IP), excellent quality control and an outstanding record of on-time delivery, Ultizen provides the highest quality game art development outsourcing services to North American, European and Japanese clients ranging from “top 20” gaming and media companies to small and mid-size studios.

Ultizen Games’ 350-person studio provides game development services including game design, porting, programming and art. A certified Microsoft XBOX Live Arcade game developer, the company plans to launch its first title on the XBOX platform in the fall of 2008.

“China has become the biggest game development and art outsourcing market in recent years and we believe the market will continue to grow exponentially in the near future. With the advanced technology and more than 350 talented developers, Ultizen has the potential to become the market leader in the industry,” said PAC-LINK General Partner Allen Hsu. “In addition, the web-based casual game industry has shown tremendous growth. As an early mover in this segment, we believe that Ultizen will become a dominant player and, moreover, have great potential to expand from a developer into an influential publishing and operating company in this segment.”

Founded in January 2005 by gaming industry veterans Lan Haiwen and Wu Jun, now Ultizen’s CEO and Vice President, respectively, the company has achieved rapid success, and has grown to be one of the top three independent game studios in China, both organically and through the acquisition of Beijing-based Mo-Star Limited, a well-established game content provider on China Mobile’s game portal platform. The company maintains studios in Shanghai and Beijing, China and opened an office in Los Angeles in the fall of 2007.

“Ultizen’s leadership team, Lan Haiwen and Wu Jun, combines a deep knowledge of the gaming industry and the Chinese game development market with a sophisticated understanding of the needs of game development and media companies around the globe,” said Dragonvest Partners Co-Founder and Co-Managing General Partner Jesse Parker. “They have done an outstanding job of attracting and retaining the top talent needed to support rapid growth and address their clients skills and resource requirements while maintaining a high quality standard.”

Ming Hsu, General Partner, PAC-LINK and Tetsuya Tsuda, CEO of Japan Asia Investment (China) Co., Ltd. will join Dragonvest Partners’ Jesse Parker; Ultizen Vice President Wu Jun; and board chairman and Ultizen CEO Lan Haiwen on the company’s Board of Directors.

“Ultizen’s track record of profitable growth is a validation of our capabilities and the top- and bottom-line business benefit our clients derive from partnering with us,” said Lan Haiwen. “The addition of PAC-LINK, JAIC and Cyber Agent to our investment team provides us with the resources to aggressively expand our leadership position among China-based game development and outsourcing companies to address the huge market opportunity the thriving global gaming industry presents.”

While we don't want to delay the game, and we certainly don't want to disappoint anyone—and we're keen to ship the game and move on to Mercs 3—it was the right call for us was to make sure that co-op [in Mercs 2] was going to be properly integrated into the experience and to make sure that all that key destruction was really going to be what it needed to be.

We hope you're curious about multiplayer in Splinter Cell: Double Agent and want to see some videos, because we've got two of the blasted things to insert into this one throwaway post. The first details the 'Spies' multiplayer mode; the second, 'Mercenaries', after the jump. I'm not quite sure I'm any more in the clear on how 'Spies' is played after watching it, though. But 'Mercenaries' sure looks cool. Florian Eckhardt

Feast your eyes, mortals, on the 13-year-old winner's acceptance speech:

Hello my name is Matt Deluca but my friends call me mongoose and I am 13 years old. My gamertag is: phatalerror so you can play me on Mercs2WiF (hopefully it comes out for 360).

I was born in Egg Harbor City NJ but I moved and now I live in Atco NJ. Well I am a student on summer vacation, but I do work for a landscaping company for a summer job!

Some of my favorite video games are: Mercenaries, Halo, Halo2, Call of Duty 2, the Metal Gear Solid Series, and to all my buddies over in Iraq the Tom Clancy Series! But when I'm away from my sweet, sweet 360 I go paintballing with some of my friends.

In 20 years I see myself in the military or on the SWAT team and my specialty would be demolitions or a sniper. And that's me!

Mongoose drew the sword seen on the main contest page and won the contest, beating out a slew of better entries that are visible in the "gallery". The design at the right is not his, but it was my favorite. Imagine actually getting that tattooed onto yourself. Fricking sweet.

Why a sword entwined with roses, Mongoose?

A sword to represent strongness, which is a valuable asset in combat. It would be COOL if Mattias had a sword on his arm though!

Roger that. Carry on. Eliza sweet fancy moses it's a slow news day gauger

Aspiring tattoo artists take note! The character design team over at Pandemic has been snorting Pixy Stix out of each other's navels for the past three days, and they are tired. And if there's one thing I've learned at Kotaku Headquarters in the few weeks I've been here, it's that only through great adversity (and vageuly homoerotic sugar bingeing), are great gaming ideas born.

To spare their delicate artists further trauma, Pandemic Studios has launched a contest to decide what will be indelibly poked into main mercenary Mattias' arms:

For the upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Pandemic Studios is calling for their fans to contribute to the design of the lead character, Mattias Nilsson. In "Design the Ink" - the current Mercenaries 2 contest - Pandemic is currently accepting original tattoo designs for the lead Mercenary. The winner will have his or her name featured in the credits and Mattias will actually wear the winning design in the final released version of the game!

Shut down that pirated copy of Illustrator, no tribal designs are being accepted! Also on the "no" list are nudity, profanity, or copyrighted works. So that charming rendering of Samus, in dishabille, dropping a fat f-bomb in a speech bubble, will just have to remain in your My Pictures folder a trifle longer. Very sorry. Eliza Gauger

Design the Ink Contest [Mercenaries II site]