In a move that’s likely going to make some gamers mad, engine maker DICE has revealed that starting in 2013 some games running the Frostbite 2 engine will require a 64-bit operating system. While no games in particular have been announced as requiring a 64-bit OS, it’ll only be a matter of time before it’s discovered what games will need a 64-bit OS. I don’t know about you, but this kind of makes me a bit excited, and at the same time, a bit apprehensive.

64-bit processors have been around in PC’s since 2003, but in the 9 years since their mainstream debut they have yet to take a majority market share. Part of the reason for this trend has to do with the fact that while Windows XP has a 64-bit version, it was not made widely available, and the 32-bit version of XP was available for people’s new pre-built PC’s for many, many years, even after Vista was released. Even if those people later upgraded there systems to Windows 7, it’s likely that they upgraded to the 32-bit version to avoid any other hassles of losing information or other inconsistencies. While the trend is slowly starting to swing into the 64- bit OS’s favor, it’s apparently not going fast enough for DICE and EA.

And, in the end, it makes sense for EA and DICE to want 64-bit OS’s to  become the norm. One of the main problems facing 32-bit OS’s is the fact that they can only support up to 4 GB’s of RAM, and game developers are constantly pushing the envelope of games. So far, it’s reached a plateau, and while games look spectacular right now, imagine how good they would look like if game developers could rely on enough people having 64-bit OS’s that they could up the recommended, or even required specifications for games to include more than 4 GB’s of RAM? There’s an entire gaming world out there unexplored, if only because of the vast number of dinosaurs stuck with an outdated OS. This is one trend that EA is pushing for that I actually support, if only because I already own a 64-bit system.

Many people were angry over the ending of Mass Effect 3. They felt that no matter what you did in the previous games, you were basically given a choice of 3 different options, which were essentially all the same. Well, BioWare, the developer for the game, heard your grumblings and decided that they’re going to release a free bit of DLC to better explain the ending.

In an interview with G4, it was confirmed that the voices for Admiral Hackett and EDI, actor Lance Henriksen and actress Tricia Helfer, are recording more lines for the game. Henriksen had this to say about what he’s doing: “I just did another session with them…They were saying there’s a little bit of a problem with the abruptness of the ending, so we did a whole series of things to add to the end of the game, to live up to the quality they’ve been doing.”

Also included in the list of voice actors making a return is Raphael Sbarge, the voice of Kaidan Alenko. Considering how you have to make a choice concerning Kaidan and Ashley’s fate in the original Mass Effect, it won’t be surprising to see Ashley’s voice actress make an appearance as well. The thing I have to wonder about at this point, though, is that are these characters going be performing the in present, so to speak? Will they be saying stuff that’s going on as you’re playing the game to help better explain the ending? Or will they be used for exposition after the “ending”, giving a recap of what exactly happened after Shepard defeated the Reapers?

In the latest EA news, the company is now trying to help out the little man a bit by waving all distribution fees for crowd funded games for three months. It’s a shockingly nice move by a company that quite frankly gets a lot of well-deserved flak for some of the company’s practices in the past. So, I have to wonder, what’s the catch? What is EA trying to pull here?

Well, simply put, EA is looking for more users and developers for its Origin service. While they claim that 9.3 million people have downloaded and installed Origin, it’s commonly thought that most people still purchase most of their games through Steam or other services. This is an attempt by the company to draw some potentially talented developers to the platform, instead of having the games show up on Steam.

Overall, not a bad deal for everyone involved. If anything, the developers stand the most to gain here, as they’ll be keeping all of their money from the sales they’ll get from Origin in the first 90 days. And, you have to figure that those first 90 days are likely to see the vast majority of the copies sold in the lifetime of the product. But while EA isn’t likely to make money off of the games themselves, those people who play those particular games will be using Origin, and EA is going to make sure that the gamers see all of the other deals that Origin has going on.

Remember the mysterious disappearance of the official DICE servers for Battlefield 3? Well, I guess if you’re looking at it from their perspective, none of the servers actually disappeared. Instead, they were simply repurposed. Regardless of perspective, the lack of official servers sucks for console players. Thankfully we have an update from EA.

According to an EA representative “You should see DICE-hosted servers up today. I do not have the exact percentage or number of servers, but we’ll continue to monitor this to make sure all players are having the best possible gameplay experience.” And it does indeed look like a large number of official servers are indeed online.

What bothers me about this is that they didn’t keep any official servers around in the first place. The servers that people are renting are being paid for, in addition to the money they put into the game. Essentially, they were punishing non-paying players for trying to play on the same servers they’d always used. Shame on you EA. That’s just a dirty grab for money right there. At least they fixed it when called out.

When Battlefield 3 was released, people were perhaps a bit upset when they found out that there were no options to customize a server for the console versions of the game. That all changed in March when EA unveiled the Rent-a-Server option, allowing for anybody on any system the ability to rent out one of the official DICE servers and customize it how they see fit. This was a good option, as it allowed people to custom-tailor the game to the way they wanted to play it.

That is, it was a good option until DICE and EA started to back away from the official servers all together. It seems that once they saw how many people were willing to pay for servers, EA and DICE made a decision to just go ahead and just let the custom servers be the only servers available. Now, while that might seem like it’s no big deal, consider the people you’ve played with from time to time. Remember that guy you killed, who started PM’ing you threats about what he’s going to do to your mother, and how you “f***ed with the wrong guy”? He’s got admin powers now. Looks like you’re back in the server list. What about your friend who just likes killing hordes and hordes of people for hours on end? Now he has a server with a 1000 kill limit on it. Have fun finishing that game up any time soon!

EA and DICE saw that people were willing to pay and reacted accordingly, but because of their shortsightedness, they might very well have shortened the games lifespan by months or even years. By not having enough standard match servers around, they’re alienating the fans of the game who don’t want to spend match after match on the same map, or with some insane weapon restrictions such as “Knife-Only”. Allowing custom servers is one thing, but to feature custom servers and take away the regular vanilla servers is just pure greed. What else can you expect from EA, though?

Creeping behind months of rumors, including an odd display poster at an event half-way around the world, EA has announced that a new Dead Space is official. The publisher spoke with Game Informer during an investor call, name-dropping the game among a list of upcoming titles.

We don’t know if the new title will specifically be Dead Space 3, or a completely different game in the series all together. A spokesperson noted in an email to the magazine, “There’s no further information today but watch for several big product announcements from EA at E3 in June.” With all of the evidence we’ve seen so far, it’s easy to lean towards Dead Space 3 as this new announced title.

The new game is said to be released by the end of this fiscal year, which will conclude on March 31^st 2013. There have been rumors that the next Dead Space will take place on an icy planet this time around, and not a space ship like the last two. I think going planet-side will really change up the series, and offer a more open-world type of take on the game’s approach. Whether it’s Dead Space 3, or some other Dead Space title, I’m excited for it. Let’s just not make it Dead Space: Ice World Kart Racing.

Electronic Arts has just released some numbers for their financial earnings, and they weren’t exactly looking too great. With the release they’ve announced that they’ve delayed a “key game” from the 13th to 14th fiscal year. In other words, they have stopped a game from releasing by March 31st 2013, and delayed it to release some time after.

What exactly could this “key game” be? Michael Pachter, a well-known financial analyst, assumes that it could be Dragon Age III, and he’s got a compelling theory as to why. His idea is that the game was delayed so that developers working on Dragon Age III could head over to provide help with Star Wars: The Old Republic. This theory makes some sense, as EA announced that the subscriber base in the new MMO has dropped. Players seem to want more content, therefore BioWare is working to make that happen.

 Pachter had this to say about his assumption:

“When we spoke with the [EA] CEO, he added the color that the game was expected to slip because the team had been pulled away to work on another important project. While we don’t know what the game is, the only game that makes sense is Dragon Age 3, as it is developed by BioWare, the same studio that produced the Star Wars MMO. It seems obvious to us that the BioWare team responsible for Dragon Age 3 was asked to place development of that game on hold and work on Star Wars, to ensure that the latter game launched before the holidays.”

We can’t say for sure that Pachter’s theory is solid, but it makes a lot of sense. With BioWare working to bring their SWTOR subscriber base back up, and with fans ringing in their complaints with Dragon Age II, this delay could be a win-win situation for the company. We haven’t gotten official word from BioWare on this yet, but as soon as it comes we’ll have an update. Who knows, maybe this is what the Dragon Age series needs right now?

Three weeks ago, it was reported that EA was going to lay off a significant percentage of their employees. EA denied the rumors, saying that “EA is growing and looking to hire hundreds of people”. Well, this might not come as a shock to you, but turns out EA was lying.

EA will be “restructuring” the company, which will cause an unspecified number of employees to be laid off. It’s part of EA’s CEO John Riccitello’s plan to use social media to help predict the future gaming trends, thanks to data mining.  In an interview with NPR.org, he had said that the company’s internal statistics will see a shift from one of eight employees being an engineer to one in two.

It doesn’t appear that this layoff is solely about cutting costs. EA is expecting to grow its numbers of employees by the end of the year, which means that the people being laid off are being laid off because they lack certain skills that EA needs. It’s sad to see people losing their jobs in such a way, but if a company wants to change the way it does business, it needs to be willing to drop the tools it doesn’t need and pick up the tools it does. Here’s hoping that the people who will lose their jobs will find something new soon.

In their earnings statement, released yesterday, EA announced that subscribers for the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic have dropped from their peak of 1.7 million active subscribers to 1.3 million. For those of you who aren’t math majors, that’s about 25%. Generally, if you’ve lost 25% of your subscriber base in a few months, that’s not a good thing.

EA, however, is not panicking at this time. People have speculated that part of the dramatic drop in numbers is coming from the fact that many of the casual players and people who gained free trials are dropping off, and indeed, that’s what EA is saying. That doesn’t mean that EA isn’t watching the trends for the game. If the numbers keep dipping down, then there might be a problem. If, however, the numbers even out and stay steady, then expect SWTOR to be around for a good, long while.

Now that the causal gamers are getting out of the game, expect to see a good portion of new content focus on keeping the older, more hardcore players interested. For instance, in the next patch 1.3, you can expect to see people gaining access to level 25 speeders at level 10, boosted affection gains for companions from events, and even the option to access mailboxes, reset the skill tree, and repair items in the field. These are the kinds of things that will keep players wanting to play the game, as they won’t have to waste so much time going back and forth to town to repair their items. The more streamlined the game is, the more fun the players are having, and the more often they’ll want to roll new characters. I have a feeling that this is going to work out pretty well.

EA is looking to use Nexon’s servers and developers for the game in Asia. They want to use Nexon’s expertise in getting people to buy downloadable content and use it to get people to spend their money on things like team jerseys and player experience points. In other words, EA is looking for Nexon to be the distributor of FIFA in Asia.

This makes quite a bit more sense than a merger. Nexon deals more in the free gaming industry, where a person can play a game for free, but if they want to get more enjoyment out of the game, they can purchase different virtual add-ons to customize their character. If they bought EA, I would see that there would be a clash of cultures and philosophies, and it would be a rocky marriage from the start. If you’re one of those people who were wishing to see EA bought out by another company, however, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep waiting.