C&C Labs News Wire

— Friday, August 15, 2008 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 8:05:46 AM ET

Generals 2 Rumors

In what most definitely qualifies as a unsubstantiated rumor, some other sites are suggesting that EALA may be developing Generals 2. The main reason for this speculation is the fact that in February it appears EALA registered the Generals2.com domain name. In addition, the Red Alert 3: Premier Edition will include a beta key to a future C&C game. We'll have to wait and see on this one, but I don't believe that Generals II is currently in development for a few reasons:

  • EALA also registered every "generals" domain name through www.generals9.com. It's obvious that there won't be nine Generals games (or, at least we should all hope not). So it's unclear how much we should read into this.
  • EALA, I believe, still only has two teams working in the C&C portion of the studio: The C&C 3/RA3 team and the Tiberium team. Prior to the announcement of Tiberium, EA claimed to have two teams working on C&C games, but as we reported, one of those teams was in fact BreakAway Games. It's unlikely, I think, that EA would outsource the development of Generals 2, as it is not an expansion pack.
  • EALA has announced the creation of another team, the "live" team, but this team is far from fully formed and will not be used to develop games, but rather to provide aftermarket support. So it's unlikely that EA would be capable of adding so many people at once to create two new development teams, in addition to the two they already have.
  • It is possible, though, that the Red Alert 3 team will move to Generals 2 after the game is done (and that some parts of the team have already begun working on Generals 2), but I think it highly unlikely. Remember that there is an expansion planned to Red Alert 3 and that, unless EA chooses to outsource it again, the Red Alert 3 team will be developing it. I think it's most likely that the beta key will be used for either this expansion or for Tiberium.
  • Lastly, there isn't much from Generals or Zero Hour to continue, as the games were sans plots. Many liked the games for the good balance system, but if the selling points of the game were not the sides or the characters, why go back to those sides and characters? Marketing-wise, it'd be better to try to take the gameplay elements of Zero Hour and use it in other C&C games, as EA is doing with Red Alert 3.

All in all, don't get your hopes up. I think the Generals era is over.

Last edited by Mike on Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 10:10:11 PM.

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