Electronic Arts News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Microsoft has announced the next wave of titles heading to Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

The developer of the recently struck down Portal N64 port has shed some more light on what happened and told fans to not be mad at Valve.

A fan-made remake of Team Fortress 2 in the Source 2 engine has been cancelled after the ambitious project, three years in the making, ran into a double-whammy of recent development issues and a legal takedown from Valve.

Cast your mind back to May last year and you might remember EA canvassing The Sims 4 players to see if they'd prefer to see the game receive a Medieval Castle or High Tech Futurism themed building pack at some nebulous future point. Well, Medieval Castle (wrongly) won the vote, and some eight months later it looks like the DLC is ready for an imminent release.

Fans of Apex Legends are outraged at the cost of cosmetic items in the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth crossover event, that they fear will total over £300.

A recently released fan mod for Portal 2 adds 40 new test chambers for players to wrap their heads around, including new mechanics and a brand new story.

Portal: Revolution is an eight hour fan-made Portal 2 prequel, with 40 new test chambers, voiced characters and new puzzle mechanics. It looks seriously impressive and it's out now, with a trailer below.

Every game is Who Framed Roger Rabbit now - or, less charitably, a metaversal hellscape where canonical integrity matters far less than providing a platform through which to sell cosmetics.

BioWare and Mass Effect veteran Mac Walters has discussed his reasons for departing the studio after 19 years to begin work with a fresh team on a new sci-fi franchise.

EA is rebranding its in-house engine Frostbite to reflect its «renewed focus on partnership» with its studios, but also says its teams are «free to develop on any engine they choose».

Electronic Arts’ proprietary Frostbite engine has received a makeover with a new logo and brand identity. Instead of multiple splinters and shards, the handprint is now a smoother, more defined shape. While built to “explore, evolve and apply proprietary technology specifically with, and for, our game studios”, it now represents “a platform for collaborative innovation.”

22cans has confirmed it is withdrawing Godus and Godus Wars from sale on Steam.

Squashed as it was between The Game Awards, a dozen or more game announcements, and the release of The Finals and The Day Before, you can be forgiven for missing the release of the latest expansion for The Sims 4 on December 7th. For Rent adds multi-family lots to the aging dollhouse 'em up, and with it the ability to be a landlord or renter within apartnment buildings.

Electronic Arts has implemented a round of layoffs at F1 developer Codemasters.

EA has confirmed layoffs at UK developer Codemasters, the developer behind recent racing games F1 23 and EA Sports WRC.

Woe, woe unto the poor marketing teams of BioWare, who had the misfortune to release their latest Dragon Age: Dreadwolf video hours before the leak of the GTA 6 trailer. The Dragon Age trailer is just a teaser, with a full reveal coming in summer 2024, but it sheds some light on the new RPG's setting, and introduces a rather menacing character who sounds like Patrick Stewart - BioWare have yet to reveal the actor.

BioWare just released a new Dragon Age: Dreadwolf teaser, only to then say the game won't be getting a full reveal until next year.

Publisher Electronic Arts and developer BioWare have released a new trailer for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf as part of Dragon Age Day 2023, as well as announced that a full reveal is scheduled for summer 2024. PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam pages are also live.

Publisher ININ Games and developer DICE will release Ultracore for Xbox Series and Xbox One via Microsoft Store on December 7, the companies announced.

Electronic Arts has filed a trademark application for the words Neon Fox.

EA has «opened up» its accessibility tools and technology for «wider use to help gamers».

After offering up some of their accessibility inventions for free a couple of years ago - including the context-aware ping system seen in Apex Legends and code for a colourblindness tool - Electronic Arts are opening up even more of their accessibility features for anyone to use.

TimeSplitters studio Free Radical could be closed before Christmas, megacorp owner Embracer has reportedly told staff, as dozens of staff at the UK studio are said to be looking for new roles.

An «extremely early» Left 4 Dead prototype is now available to play thanks to Counter-Strike's 1.6 update.

To celebrate The Sims 4's upcoming expansion pack, For Rent, EA is inviting you to «become the ultimate property mogul» and join Llandgraab & Sons Estate Agents for a day to sample what it's like to be on the other end of a tenancy agreement.

EA Sports FC 24 will bring one of next year’s biggest football tournaments to The Video Game Franchise Formerly Known As FIFA next summer, letting you experience the UEFA Euro 2024 championships via a free update. There’ll also be the chance to compete in a virtual Euros hosted via the new game.

EA Sports FC 24 players will be able to experience the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament from the comfort of home thanks to an upcoming free in-game update.

The next Sims game - currently codenamed Project Rene, even though we all know it’ll almost definitely be called The Sims 5 - will “definitely” have a multiplayer element of some kind, according to its devs. As guidance on what that could be, its team are unsurprisingly looking at the success of fellow cozy life-sim game Animal Crossing, as well as a perhaps less obvious inspiration in murder-mystery argument-starter Among Us.

The CEO of Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has said releasing the game during such a busy window «100 percent» contributed to its poor sales figures.

Respawn says it has «resolved» the issues that scuppered its recent rollout of cross-progression on Apex Legends.

Immortals Of Aveum never looked like it was going to be successful, and it wasn't. I root for it, however. In an industry where big budget blockbusters are most often sequels, or boringly safe, Aveum feels comparatively bold just by being a self-evidentaly daft first-person mashup of Call Of Duty and Doctor Strange magic powers.

First-person «magic shooter» Immortals of Aveum is free to try courtesy of an all-new demo.

Developer Ascendant Studios has released a major update for its magic-based first-person shooter Immortals of Aveum. The update, dubbed the Echollector update, brings with it a host of changes and new features to the game. Celebrating the update is a new trailer that you can check out below.

Former Dragon Age: Dreadwolf production director and veteran Mass Effect scribe Mac Walters has founded a new studio, Worlds Untold, with funding from NetEase. According to the official site, the studio will develop "triple-A action adventure games with an emphasis on narrative and worldbuilding": its first project is a single-player-focussed, "near future action adventure game in a breathtaking world filled with mystery and exploration".

Rocket Arena, the third-person hero shooter published in 2020 by EA, has been removed from sale without much warning. So far neither EA or developers Final Strike Games have given a reason for the delisting, but you can no longer buy it from its Steam or EA store pages.

Dungeon Keeper is a stone cold, never-bettered classic of the management genre, no matter how many other games try to mimic its devilish setting and moreish progression. The only issue is that the 1997 original is a little ugly and constrained by modern standards.

Mass Effect fans have been debating a recent claim that the next game in the series may not launch until 2029.

This year's BBC Children in Need kicks off with a dedicated TV live show devoted to video games, set to air on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer tomorrow, Friday 10th November at 7pm.

Four of the biggest companies in the industry have been targeted by a lawsuit accusing them of enabling video game addiction.

BioWare's new Mass Effect game may still be several years away, but fans of the stellar sci-fi franchise are working hard to provide new playable content for the series' Mass Effect Legendary Edition trilogy package much sooner, in the form of mods.

BioWare has celebrated this year's annual Mass Effect celebrations with a blog post that hints at Mass Effect 5's title — and suggests fans will get answers to their burning questions concerning what happened after Mass Effect 3's ending.

Laid-off Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect developers are attempting to turn this year's "N7 Day" of Mass Effect-themed festivities into a day of mass revolt. The developers in question are a mixture of former full-time staff and former Keywords Studios QA testers who have worked on Dreadwolf under contract. They've organised pickets outside BioWare Edmonton's offices in Canada, and are calling on BioWare fans to get involved on social media, while trying to engage current BioWare staff in conversation about unionisation.

A group of former BioWare testers plan to protest outside the company's Edmonton headquarters today, after being laid off from contract studio Keywords last month.

Cryptic Studios, the makers of MMOs including Star Trek Online and Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG Neverwinter, have confirmed a number of layoffs due to the ongoing “comprehensive restructuring” of megacorp owner Embracer Group. The “personnel changes” at Cryptic make them the latest Embracer-owned developer to suffer job losses in what continues to be an unrelenting year for thousands of those working in video games.

Devolver have released a Let's Play for robo-philosophical puzzler The Talos Principle 2 in which the Let's Player is GLaDOS, nemesis of Valve's Portal games, with which The Talos Principle has a few things in common. They've brought on original Portal voice actress Ellen McClain to narrate the footage, and the result is genuinely quite funny. As you'd expect, GlaDOS isn't that impressed by Croteam's work. I score this a 7/10 on the Hoot And/Or Holler scale.

Surprise! Diablo 4 only came out a few months ago, but there’s already a brand new Diablo game in the works. Two, in fact! The twist? These will be tabletop adaptations of Blizzard’s action-RPG series, taking Diablo into the realm occupied by Dungeons & Dragons and Catan.

The Sims 4 has long offered millennials the unattainable fantasy of owning their own home. On December 7th, it'll instead offer something much closer to reality. That's when the For Rent expansion will launch, adding multi-family lots so you can construct apartment buildings, rent out your spare basement, or have an authentically terrible time as a tenant.

The Sims 4 team has lifted the lid on its upcoming expansion pack, known as For Rent. As you may have surmised given its title, this pack will allow players to give property ownership a whirl, and become a landlord.

PC players who want to continue hopping into online matches in some of ’s multiplayer titles may want to finally pull the trigger on an OS upgrade, as the publisher has announced that it is dropping support for Battlefield 1, Battlefield V, and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. While more recent games like 2021’s Battlefield 2042 will continue to be supported on the aging OSs, fans of this trio of titles will no longer have any guarantee that their games will work correctly.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson says the publisher is seeing 'softness' in Europe when it comes to video games spend.

EA Sports FC 24 has had a successful launch and EA expects "modest growth" for the title year-on-year, CFO Stuart Canfield said during the firm's earnings call for Q2 FY2024.

Electronic Arts released its earnings report for Q2 FY24, which is the three months ended September 30, 2023, with the firm seeing slight revenue and bookings growth attributed to Madden NFL, FIFA 23 and the successful launch of EA Sports FC 24.

Dead Space 3 has lived in infamy thanks to some controversial decisions that were made about the game’s core design and story. Story producer Chuck Beaver, speaking with YouTuber CaptainBribo, has revealed that he would like to “almost completely” rewrite the game’s story.

EA Motive Studio’s Iron Man game is still in early pre-production, with Unreal Engine 5 being used over Frostbite. In a recent tweet, author Ryan North announced he’s part of the writing team for the upcoming superhero title, adding, “You are not ready for how amazing this game is going to be.”

That time of year is here once again, it’s time for a new installment of everyone’s favorite yearly footballing game. EA Sports FC 24, previously FIFA, is coming out incredibly soon, and it seemingly can’t come soon enough. The start of each year’s Ultimate Team is particularly fun, having to make-do with cards that you wouldn’t usually use and finding some hidden gems in the early days of the game. While this is all exciting, the wait is almost unbearable, and knowing when you’re going to be able to play the game is important so you know to set a countdown to the day. Here’s when you can play EA Sports FC 24, with Early Access Trial, Ultimate Edition and Standard Edition dates.

About two weeks before the release of Immortals of Aveum, EA's new first-person spell-shooter action title, Baldur's Gate III released to rapturous acclaim. Larian Studios' Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG - with its deeply rewarding quests, robust gameplay systems, and its evocative characters and storylines - became a global phenomenon, racking up over 800,000 concurrent players on steam. A strong contender for Game of the Year, Baldur's Gate III offers meaningful choices, compelling narratives, and hundreds of hours of immersive experience in the Forgotten Realms.

EA has confirmed that The Sims 5, currently under development at Maxis as Project Rene, will be “free to download” in the newest Behind The Sims video released for the game. Essentially, this means that players will be able to jump into the game and play around without having to make any purchases or pay for any subscriptions. This confirms an earlier job listing that suggested that the game would be “free to join”.

Electronic Arts has announced EA Sports UFC 5 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. It will launch on October 27 in $69.99 standard and $99.99 Deluxe editions. Digital pre-orders are available now.

Publisher Electronic Arts and developer Codemasters have announced EA Sports WRC for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App). It will launch on November 3 for $49.99.

Ascendant Studios has released its second update for Immortals of Aveum, bringing some much-needed fixes. Future updates are coming to add more options and features requested by players. For now, PC players can look forward to increased range for mouse sensitivity to set it lower. Console players who found the brightness too dark or bright should also see this fixed.

Fans will be waiting a bit longer for BioWare’s. The studio had hoped to launch the game this year on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S before moving it back to early 2024. Now, BioWare is moving Dragon Age: Dreadwolf’s release window back to Summer 2024 at the earliest.

Publisher EA and developer Ascendant Studios have announced that first-person magic-based sh ooter Immortals of Aveum is out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Leading up to its launch, the game had gotten a launch trailer released earlier this week.

Electronic Arts announced its preliminary results for the first quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, ending June 30th, 2023. The publisher announced “record” Q1 results with EA Sports global football (i.e. FIFA and Madden NFL) and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor providing “strong momentum.” Net bookings hit $1.578 billion, a 21 percent increase year-over-year.

PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are currently in the “early stages” of development, publisher Electronic Arts said during its earnings briefing today. A release date was not announced.

As reported earlier, Pikmin 4 topped Gfk’s UK physical sales charts on its debut. The sequel has sold 45 percent more than Pikmin 3: Deluxe (per GamesIndustry), but perhaps more interesting is the other new debut: The Sims 4 Horse Ranch.