Fantastic new Gamescom 2011 trailer for EA SPORTS SSX featuring pre alpha gameplay.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After a very disappointing holiday quarter in 2008, in which the company lost 641 million USD, Electronic Arts’ chief operating officer, John Pleasants, made some interesting statements at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference a few days ago: “The biggest thing was that we didn’t make hits.”

As a result of the weak economy and missing hits, EA is currently cutting down costs by reducing its work force by about 11 percent and closing 12 facilities. The question now is: did they learn from their previous mistakes, though? As mentioned, EA is planning to cut jobs in all areas, with the exception of marketing. Pleasants actually said that they are going to increase, not decrease, the money spend on marketing.

“The game-development process has evolved, so the marketing should as well,” he said. “It’s less about ‘We have an idea, we go away for 24 months and spend USD 30 million working on a game, then put a little buzz out there and hope it works.’ We need to have a dialogue with the audience, take a longer lead time and make sure we have the right mix of digital and traditional.”

Besides that, EA plans to lower the number of titles they are going to release per year by about 20 percent. “You can lose your way on basic execution when you have too many games,” Pleasants said.

Electronic Arts has just released the first MP trailer for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and it’s darn nice. Bad Company 2 is expected to release in early half of 2010.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On August 31, 1995 Westwood Studios released the first installment of Command & Conquer – Tiberian Dawn. Now, 14 years later it seems as if EA, current developer of the series, is bringing the Tiberium saga to an end with the release of Command & Conquer 4 in 2010.

Check out the Debut Trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It seems today is one of those days when the gaming news are just pouring in with no end in sight. Anyway. This one is probably an announcement many gamers were looking forward to for quite some time already.

Today, Electronic Arts announced that it has agreed with Crytek to publish Crysis 2.

But not only that, Crysis 2 is the first game from German developer Crytek that is not only going to be released on the PC, but on PS3 and Xbox 360, as well.

“The development of Crysis 2 marks a major stepping stone for our studio,” said Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, adding “This is not only the next game in the Crysis franchise, it’s the first title we are developing for consoles and the first title being built on CryENGINE 3. We are excited to have the support of EA Partners again as we work together to make the launch of Crysis 2 a huge event.”

The EA PC games below were released after May 2008 and allow users to “authorize” up to five computers to play the games at the same time. Users can then play the game on any authorized computer they choose.

If your computer is authorized to play any of the EA games listed below, you can manage your computer authorizations using EA game-specific de-authorization tools.

Once de-authorized, a machine “slot” will be freed up and can be re-used on another computer. De-authorization does not uninstall the game, however, so if you decide you want to re-authorize your computer later, all you have to do is re-launch the game.

De-Authorization Tools

Click the game you want to de-authorize your computer for from the list below to download the game-specific de-authorization tool.

Incoming search terms:

• Game-spacific du authorization tool nfs undercover

Maybe a first sign that Electronic Arts is rethinking its DRM strategy is the following announcement, published on its “The Sims 3″ web site:

“The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.

We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.”

Judging by the above statement, made by Rod Humble, EA’s executive producer of the Sims division, Electronic Arts is starting to listen to its customers, after the restrictive DRM they tried to force on their customers in games like Spore, resulted in a debacle.