EA Sports to Launch New Tennis Title

Beside giving me a good reason to post pictures of Jelena Jankovic, Electronic Arts has announced that they are starting a new tennis franchise

EA Tennis will first be coming to the Nintendo Wii platform in 2009, and will come out for other platforms shortly thereafter.  EA Tennis will be the first game from Electronic Arts to use the upcoming Wii Motion Plus attachment for the Wii remote.

Also, an Electronic Arts announcement would not be complete without some form of exclusivity, the new tennis game will be the only place where you will find All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of Wimbledon.

Check the jump for a full press release.

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Take Two and EA Get Friendly and Snuggle

After trying to buy Take Two in a hostile takeover bid, Electronic Arts and Take Two have come together at the meeting table to discuss a buyout on more friendly terms.  Electronic Arts in turn has dropped its pursuit of said hostile takeover, as a show of good faith in negotiating.  Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take Two, and John Riccitiello of EA met this weekend to discuss their products and possible strategies.

Click the jump for the full statement.

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The Don Has Requested You to Watch The Godfather II Trailer

Gametrailers has released the newest trailer for Godfather II and it looks pretty good.  You play a character named Dominick, who has been put in charge of a town, that looks like a large city in South Florida.  The trailer shows off some gruesome execution kills, and a new feature, The Don View.  The Don View is new to the series, and adds an element of strategy to the game, somewhat like Risk.

One thing that this game needs to have a bit more story, as the last one really took awhile to pick up before you got to the better parts of the story.  Also, while Godfather II looks to have solid game mechanics, the graphics look a bit stale, like they are using the engine from the first game.

We will have more info on Godfather II as it becomes available.

Dead Space Designer Diary: Inside Terror

The Dead Space development team have put up a new designer diary for those that might be interested, called Inside Terror.  This diary has the development team talking about how terror can be portrayed in a video game.  Is it a beast attacking, or walking into a room with walls that are covered in blood, knowing something horrible has happened in there.  One thing I do have to say, that Dead Space, along with Project Origin are shaping up as my PC hits of the fall.

Dead Space Lighting Effects Presentation

Dave Blizard is in charge of lighting effects in Electronic Arts upcoming survival horror game, Dead Space.  Here, Dave explains the process of implementing lighting effects into a game like Dead Space, and it was absolutely facinating to this math whiz.  Who would of thought so much went into lighting a scene in a game.  Dave totally gets bonus geek credits in my book.

Dead Space Producer Presentation

Rich Briggs is one of the producers on Electronic Arts upcoming survival horror game, Dead Space.  Rich gave us a presentation on what his job consists of, including setting up timelines and generally keeping everyone on schedule.  He also got us to laugh when he mentioned his cool Powerpoint Presentations.

Dead Space VFX Direction Presentation

Ben Wanat is a Visual FX Director for Electronic Arts, currently working on their upcoming title Dead Space.  In this presentation, Dave explains how they worked through the development phases for creature creation.  The discussions shows how Dead Space strived to find a new types of enemies that would stand out from creatures that have been found in other sci-fi horror games.

Also, take note of a point in the conversation when we got to video tape a creature that had not been mentioned up to this point, and sound like it might be a boss in the game.

Dead Space Art Direction Presentation

Ian Milham is the Art Director for Dead Space, the upcoming science fiction horror game from Electronic Arts.  Here, Ian gives a breakdown on how he came up with an artistic vision for Dead Space that would separate it from other media representations of sci-fi horror.  The team make take some ideas from those films or games, but spin them into a different look that gives them a style unique to Dead Space.