Wing Commander Arena anounced

Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:32 pm by mustang

This news is a bit old but it's the first i've seen on it.

EA Launches Wing Commander Arena onto Xbox LIVE Arcade
Thursday February 22, 1:00 pm ET
Legendary Game Franchise Delivers 16-Player Online Space Combat
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS - News) today announced the return of its beloved Wing Commander(TM) franchise with Wing Commander Arena in development for the Xbox LIVE® Arcade(1). With up to 16 players, Wing Commander Arena offers the largest multi-player melee experience to date on Xbox LIVE Arcade. The game is scheduled to go live worldwide on the Arcade service in Summer 2007.

Wing Commander Arena is a fast-paced space combat game where players can team up to attack other teams of ships. The game introduces the classic franchise to an arcade-style experience that allows up to 16 players online in battle at once. Players can propel their customized ship through space, fire torpedoes and unleash deadly gravity bombs as they try to climb the leader board. Online players will compete for Frag count, high score and dueling stats.

"We're really excited to deliver unparalleled multi-player arcade action," said Chip Lange, EA Vice President. "The design for Wing Commander will appeal to both long-time fans of the franchise and immediately engage anyone who wants the melee style action of an arcade shooter."

Wing Commander Arena will feature four styles of play: single player, multi-team, multi-player free for all and multi-player duel. Within the game there are eight game maps that include team maps, free for all maps and dueling maps, so Wing Commander Arena offers a gameplay experience for every Arcade gamer, whether they want a quick ten minutes of action or a longer more immersive game.

Wing Commander Arena is produced and published by Electronic Arts and cooperatively developed with Gaia Industries. This is the second EA title for Xbox LIVE Arcade with EA's first title Boom Boom Rocket set to launch this Spring.

(1) Players must have an Xbox LIVE marketplace account to play Wing Commander Arena.

More info and screenshots can be found here.

So what do you think? Is this a re-emergence of a once great series or a shameless money grabbing affair using a presitige title with a sub-standard game? I unfortunately think the latter and even if they did put the effort into a real Wing Commander game, I still think it will never be the same without Chris Roberts at the helm.

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Honk if you demand satisfaction.

Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:16 pm by Eraser

Yeah, i've followed the whole announcement on Wing Commander Arena over at the Wing Commander CIC (www.wcnews.com). I can understand those guys are all very excited about this, since it means that EA (who holds the rights to Wing Commander) has given WC another shot to reach the public, while everyone was affraid nothing WC-based would ever see the light again. So this move from EA is good in that aspect, but personally I myself am not excited at all about this particular game. I'm excited they give WC attention again, but what made WC really great for me back in the day was the storyline and the dogfights while in cockpit view etc. WC Arena seems to have neither aspects. Sure, they've come up with a nice background story to explain a few things, but from what I've seen it's just a simple (multiplayer) shoot'em up in space.

Then again, what can you expect from a Xbox Live Arcade game right? It's not a full-blown WC title. So no, i don't think this game is going to be extremely exciting for the true WC fans. Sure, it has a little WC backstory and a bunch of WC ships, but I don't think that's really going to cut it. Like I said, it's the whole singleplayer experience and strong storyline aspect of the original series that made WC so incredibly good for me. However, now that EA is giving WC another shot is a really good sign. Hopefully they are first trying a Xbox Live Arcade game to see if people are still interested in WC, since this doesn't cost that much time, resources and money to build compared to a full-blown Xbox 360 title or PC title. So, by doing this, EA has not so much to loose as they would with a full-scale game and therefore i'm hoping that if the public goes wild for this WC title, EA might decide to go for a big project and start a whole new PC and/or Xbox 360 Wing Commander game. Fingers crossed

Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:22 pm by mustang

Amen!

Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:24 pm by [steel]

they say " THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BAD PRESS "
i hope that saying is correct as far as WC is concerned as if a half baked game is poor enough the gaming press will not take any prisoners

Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:33 pm by Esquilax

I tend to agree with you E, although any game set in the WC universe would be nice. Still, why make it Xbox-exclusive? They are probably waiting to see what the sales are like. Hmph! *Returns to shadows*

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