BREAKING NEWS: ESRB Announces Rating for 'Wing Commander Arena' (February 21, 2007)

[ChrisReid]

Silconera is reporting that the Entertainment Software Rating Board has granted an "E for Everyone" score to a game titled Wing Commander Arena by Electronic Arts. Along with an XBox 360 listing, they cited Fantasy Violence in the content description box. Joystiq's XBox 360 Site had these thoughts:

This opens up more than a few questions. First, will the game be a retail release or an Xbox Live Arcade port of an older title? The fact that it's already rated means it must be complete, and we find it hard to believe that a new retail title would have remained under wraps this long. Besides, the ESRB has provided us with plenty of good XBLA leads lately.

Note that the ESRB recently rated the unannounced EA Replay 2. We'll have more information on this exciting rumor as it becomes available. Thanks to lxi for spotting this first.

--
Original update published on February 21, 2007

[lxi]

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/02...coming-to-360/

Siliconera spotted an interesting entry on the ESRB website. It seems that a Wing Commander title from Electronic Arts was recently rated for the Xbox 360 (it got an E). The game's full title is Wing Commander Arena.

[Luigi30]

Come on multiplayer Wing Commander!

[Delance]

I sure hope there's new stuff, but either way it's great news.

[NinjaLA]

O_O

crud.. now I may have to buy me an x-box!

[Dundradal]

This is great because I just got my own 360 this weekend! Thank you very much!

[Conrad]

Oooh very interesting.

Has anyone at the CIC been approached about this by EA?

[Razer92]

this is awesome even if it is something old or new

[Vinman]

WOAH WOAH WOAH!!

This is stunning!!

I wonder what it is!!

[Cpl Hades]

Originally Posted by Razer92

this is awesome even if it is something old or new

Yeah, I hope it's either something old or something new as well.

[lxi]

an odd name...

my hope is that it's a bunch of games...

[ZFGokuSSJ1]

I think anything that has something to do with Wing Commander is good enough.

[jaeger]

Im betting its a big ol multiplayer deal. Probibly mixing the games all together. I like how ea is probing to see if they can make money on us wingnuts. I going to buy a copy even if I dont have a 360 by that time , just to make our point to ea. we want more!!!! Hey do you think they have sent spies into the forums? =x

[Mav23]

What's with the weird characters at the end of "Commander"?

[Cpl Hades]

I'm guessing it's a (TM) gone wrong.

[ChrisReid]

Originally Posted by Conrad

Xbox gamertag - Narren

Hey, you can actually plug your Gamertag into your Crius.net account via the control panel.

Originally Posted by Cpl Hades

I'm guessing it's a (TM) gone wrong.

Yeah, it's something like that. Could be a colon or any symbol that got disrupted into its component bits between the ESRB's database and its search engine results field.

[Bandit LOAF]

My GamerTag is "Bandit LOAF". I'm hoping you'll all need to know things like that real soon.

[Death]

Of course, right now I've not even picked up the Replay pack, and won't be for the forseeable future due to financial issues... and PSP+EAR is a lot cheaper than a Ybox.

[Mjr. Whoopass]

There will be a lot of ticked off people if it's a game called Wing Commander that has nothing to do with the Wing Commander series we know.. kind of like that book and old game. That's not very likely though since EA has already released a Wing Commander series game on their EA Replay.

My guess is it will be the games that already have multiplayer set up: Armada and possibly Prophecy (even though multiplayer wasn't in the game- but is now thanks to HCI, I think it was something that was considered during the design of the game and the game could lend itself well to online play).

[Trelane]

Maybe it's a computerized version of the card game.

My XBox GamerTag is SnappishAmoeba.

This post was just an excuse to say my awesome GamerTag screenname.

[dragon875]

That is great news! I hope they release this on the PC sometime.

[Hawkjoe]

A PC version would be nice...if it is a good game. I don't plan on buying an X-Box any time soon.

[lxi]

my guess is that it's a xbla game... multiplayer... armada would be sweet

[Meson]

This might get me to get a 360.

[Pedro]

As the article indicates there is every reason to believe its an XBLA game, the name obviously screams online. The lack of promotion would also explain it, developers for XBLA and the Wii VC have no idea when exactly their titles will be released. I don't have a 360 dev kit at my new job, but I'll be hounding those that do every day to find out if anything has popped up on the developer version of XBLA.
My personal guess would be that its an original creation, if they are testing the waters for the viability of the franchise they wouldn't do so with a re-release.

[cff]

:-(
Could someone donate me a XBox 360?!
Great news, but bad choice of hardware as far as I am concerned. Hope it won't stay 360 exclusive for long.

[Don]

We need you again, Mark Hamill!!!

[mach81]

................
( too happy to write )

[mach81]

( backthrown by reality )
Now the guy makes sense who asked for a wingcommander merchandise license for nonelectronic products.Well, my 360 is ready, even if its a multyplayer game. Wing Commander Armada with cheap controls and without tactical elements. But if the game brings the big bucks, there will be perhaps a WC1 Remake with Mark Hamill as Colonel Halycon
..........
( too happy to write agagin )

[LeHah]

Originally Posted by Don

We need you again, Mark Hamill!!!

Not nessessarily. Wing Commander got it's reputation from two games that didn't have FMV - and then also had several spin-off titles of excellent quality.

I'll admit to doing a double take to the title of this "new" game. I thought it said Armada. Still, good news, can't wait to see the result.

[Foxtrot]

I just saw this on Joystiq and I was frozen for a whole minute !!

Now the question is, is this an entirely new game or is it a polished version of one of the older ones ?

You know what, i dont freakin care, anything thats WingCommander and HighDef and on my 360 would have to be amazing !!!

[StarSlayer]

I am both incredibly excited and a little worried.

I love my 360 to death and it is fantastic for many games, like Gears of War and Rainbow Six. But, anyone who played wing commander 3 on the PS2 or Wing Commander on the SNES might remember that the complexities of power managment, comms, nav map, and other such elements of wing commander combat do not exactly lend themselves to a non-keyboard control scheme. Sure in the PS2 port you could do everything that you could in the PC version but it involved unusual and often painful contortions of your hands...and a lot of memorization.

Will the game have an insanely complicated control scheme, or will Wing commander be reduced (read: dumbed down) into the likes of other arcade games on XBLA so that new-comers to the series will wonder what all the hype was about.

This same concern bothers me in the attempt to bring RTS to the console. Halo wars for example. How can you select groups of units quickly without a mouse?? Some things were meant to be great PC games, not mediocre attempts to boost console market share.... I hope EA and Microsoft know the difference.

Still...if it comes out...I'm buying it, and perhaps it will be the debut for the previously-unmentioned keyboard support of the 360 (Yes, that's right keyboards DO work with it...plug a USB one into it and you can type away..)

[Mjr. Whoopass]

But, anyone who played wing commander 3 on the PS2 or Wing Commander on the SNES might remember that the complexities of power managment, comms, nav map, and other such elements of wing commander combat do not exactly lend themselves to a non-keyboard control scheme. Sure in the PS2 port you could do everything that you could in the PC version but it involved unusual and often painful contortions of your hands...and a lot of memorization.

There's a reason why I'm not worried about it. Starlancer. When I was looking at playing it, I was concerned that it didn't have a joystick and thought it might not feel as real. In my opinion though, the controls flowed so seemlessly that it made a joystick/keyboard combo seem cumbersome in comparison. I didn't like the SNES controls for WC1, but the Xbox remotes are more similar to the Sega Dreamcast, so I would bet that the controls will resemble Starlancer.

[lxi]

i didn't mind the controls for wc1 on snes...

i was playing it a little while ago on roms and it was fine...

sure a little odd at times but it worked

[AD]

Originally Posted by StarSlayer

I love my 360 to death and it is fantastic for many games, like Gears of War and Rainbow Six. But, anyone who played wing commander 3 on the PS2 or Wing Commander on the SNES might remember that the complexities of power managment, comms, nav map, and other such elements of wing commander combat do not exactly lend themselves to a non-keyboard control scheme. Sure in the PS2 port you could do everything that you could in the PC version but it involved unusual and often painful contortions of your hands...and a lot of memorization.

Well, the 360 controler has more functionalitly than the psx controler, however, The controls for WC4 PSX weren't bad. At least it used the analog stick and added things like rumble effects, even if some of the options were simplified.

However, this is why I'd hedge my bets that it's a new title, in which case we don't need to be concerned about matching the original control scheme. THe developer would most likely design the controls from the ground up to make use of the 360 controler.

[Bandit LOAF]

Wing Commander Arena has been officially announced!

[Conrad]

Originally Posted by ChrisReid

Hey, you can actually plug your Gamertag into your Crius.net account via the control panel.

Changed it over, I must of stuck that up months and months ago for the lack of anything interesting to stick down for a signiture!

Im really excited about the prospect of a new wing commander game, lets face it; 1997 was a very long time ago now.

[Mav23]

Wow Conrad, you play A LOT!

[Mjr. Whoopass]

i didn't mind the controls for wc1 on snes...

i was playing it a little while ago on roms and it was fine...

sure a little odd at times but it worked

I didn't like the controls because it takes time to issue the order for your wingman to attack. In the meantime you can't attack the enemy as you're selecting the order. Then if you're in the middle of combat and want to switch targets, you again have to switch to target selection while the enemies are shooting at you. Likewise if you want to make a break for the next nav or back to the Claw the same thing happens and you're shot at while looking for the nav selection menu. Once orders have been issued and you're in combat they work fine though.

...btw.. where'd my robot go? I plan to get the Xbox 360 anyway so I can play Arena. I guess I'll have one of those Xbox live avatars soon.

[NinjaLA]

you can register without having an xbox. I did today.

[Death]

Originally Posted by Mjr. Whoopass

...btw.. where'd my robot go? I plan to get the Xbox 360 anyway so I can play Arena. I guess I'll have one of those Xbox live avatars soon.

For this forum, avatars don't show, replacing them with gamercards.

As NinjaLA noted, you don't need to have a ybox to register (which you may want to do soon, to make sure you don't have to do something like the "WC" tacked onto my name because just "Nohbody" was taken ).

[rtheriaque]

2D environment? This reeks of being a reskin or reuse of an existing game engine. I play anything with Wing Commander in the title, however, so I'll be suckered in, but paint me cautious. I think our best hope for this is that it tests the waters for the green light on a completely new title true to the WC universe.

[Bandit LOAF]

Originally Posted by rtheriaque

2D environment? This reeks of being a reskin or reuse of an existing game engine. I play anything with Wing Commander in the title, however, so I'll be suckered in, but paint me cautious. I think our best hope for this is that it tests the waters for the green light on a completely new title true to the WC universe.

Before this gets out of hand, let me be clear: this game was developed from the ground up as a Wing Commander title. It's the result of trying to figure out how to do a Wing Commander game within the limitations of Live Arcade rather than reusing or renaming anything else.

[Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by Bandit LOAF

Before this gets out of hand, let me be clear: this game was developed from the ground up as a Wing Commander title. It's the result of trying to figure out how to do a Wing Commander game within the limitations of Live Arcade rather than reusing or renaming anything else.

well thats commendable. I just hope that EA comes to their senses and makes a proper WC game for the consoles soon. I think microsoft might even pressure them given that the 360 has no decent flight sims and the PS3 will have Warhawk ( *drools ) comming soon to the PSN.

Also its interesting to compare, the Play station network will be distributing Warhawk just like XBL will distribute Arena but there is no comparisons between the games. I think arena should have more stuff because i dont see people playing it for more than say a month after the game is released.

Its sad and all but i guess we should be somewhat thankful for getting a chance to immerse ourselves in HD wing Commander for the 1st time.

( P.S. a dream come true would be WCSaga via Microsoft XNA studio on the 360 )

[Pedro]

Originally Posted by Foxtrot

( P.S. a dream come true would be WCSaga via Microsoft XNA studio on the 360 )

XNA = the anti christ

[Death]

Pedro, please don't contribute to stupid internet groupthink. There's far more than enough of that in regards to Arena, we don't need to add the usual "Micro$uck" crap, too.

[Pedro]

Microsoft are fantastic if you're a proffesional developer, I could list the reasons XNA isn't at all what it ought to be, and is a bad starting point for aspiring programmers, but I'm at work, maybe later.

[ChrisReid]

Originally Posted by rtheriaque

2D environment? This reeks of being a reskin or reuse of an existing game engine.

As LOAF said, it was started from scratch last year as a new Wing Commander game.

Originally Posted by rtheriaque

I play anything with Wing Commander in the title, however, so I'll be suckered in, but paint me cautious. I think our best hope for this is that it tests the waters for the green light on a completely new title true to the WC universe.

Great. When you do play it, you'll see how it's surprisingly true to the WC universe after all these years. It also can't help not be testing the waters for whatever may lie in the future.

[Loozer]

This game, coming out is great news. But, I probably will not purchase it. Primarily, because I don't have a 360. The graphics are very stunning and the overall setting of the game in the WC universe shows WC has come exceedingly far.

I often wonder if the game designers visit our forums for ideas.

From what I've read about the game, it seems there is not much of a campaign mode. Of course I could be speaking too soon.
For myself, this is disappointing. The unfolding story is what draws me to the game. If the game came with a number of missions in single player mode surrounded by plot, that would buy me.
This is fantastic news, though. I might change my mind, after seeing it on the shelves in the stores, when it's released.

[Death]

It might be a little hard to see on the shelves, since it's going to be available through Live Arcade as a direct download, not a physical disc on game store shelves.