Visceral making new Command & Conquer

By Robert Purchese Published 18 October, 2010

It's "pretty far out", says EA.

EA apparently has Dante's Inferno and Dead Space maker Visceral lined up to tackle the Command & Conquer licence.

The game is "pretty far out", Visceral Games label general manager Nick Earl told Gamasutra.

But the rest of the project remains, for now, under wraps.

Nick Earl is boss of action and strategy games at EA under the new Visceral Games label. This is part of EA's plan to make brands out of its successful studios.

"Regardless of which particular geography, everyone feels like they're part of one group. Think about the DICE brand as becoming a strong FPS brand with games like Battlefield, Bad Company 2, and with BioWare being a strong brand for RPGs - we're trying to do that inside the action space, where EA has not had a strong position for some time," Earl explained.

Will Visceral's Command & Conquer be an action game? There have been some before: you might remember the awful Command & Conquer: Renegade from 2002. More recently, EA had a shooter called Tibierum that was announced in 2007 and thrown in the bin in 2008.

Why? Tiberium wasn't good enough for Riccitiello's table. "It is confirmed that Tiberium has been cancelled, as the game was not on track to meet the high quality standards set by the team and the EA Games Label," the publisher said at the time.

Command & Conquer is renowned, first and foremost, for being a real-time strategy series. The Tiberium saga of whic was brought to a disappointing close earlier this year with Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight on PC.

For now, however, Visceral Games will concentrate on delivering Dead Space 2 on 28th January 2011. Expectations are high, both inside EA and out; Earl believes DS2 will elevate the Visceral "brand" to the "next level".

EA's canned Tiberium game.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ryandsimmons #1 2 years ago

    We have Move now. Please make a proper RTS.

  • menage #2 2 years ago

    Like they're just going to do a PS3 version alone:p

    Don't know about this, Visceral basically made one very good game and one very mediocre one at this point. But change for the series can't be a bad thing with the last one going out with a whimper
    Edited by menage at 18/10/10 @ 14:07

  • wombat987 #3 2 years ago

    fingers crossed it will be good... i dont want a renegade or C&C4 remake...

  • darkmorgado #4 2 years ago

    It still stings about Tiberium. It was looking really good :-(

  • Boomerang #5 2 years ago

    I hate it when Americans take things to "the next level".

    Totally rad, etc.

  • pauleyc #6 2 years ago

    Renegade wasn't awful, just...misunderstood.

    Any game that let's you place beacons to fire Ion Cannons should get automatically at least 5 points added to the review score.

  • darkmorgado #7 2 years ago

    I hate it when Americans take things to "the next level".

    Totally rad, etc.

    Dude, that's just far out! No need to be so gnarly.

  • Hermiod #8 2 years ago

    Sadly, C&C4 was just about seeing if you could kill your enemy's units faster than they could produce them, wearing down their Crawler until it was destroyed. There was no real strategy there.

    Hopefully, any future game will encourage players to play it properly instead of pulling tricks like selling their MCV to buy a couple of tanks.

  • FogHeart #9 2 years ago

    @Menage - which one is mediocre, Dead Space or Dead Space Extraction for the Wii :p

  • darkmorgado #10 2 years ago

    I'd like to see a return to the more traditional C&C, but with the campaign meta-game from Kane's Wrath to give it some extra strategic depth.

    Command and Conquer: Total War, anyone?

  • Koozer #11 2 years ago

    How dare you insult the game that lets you shoot visceroids in the rough-approximation-of-a-face and run around inside a Hand of Nod.

  • Markitron #12 2 years ago

    Could they PLEASE make another Generals. Loved that game

  • vijay_UK #13 2 years ago

    The last good Command & Conquer game was Red Alert. The franchise has definately lost something ever since, I wish for the days where when fancy graphics and politics did not take precedence over gameplay/enjoyment. Westwood did a great job of getting people into pc gaming, maybe it was Dune II that did it for me.

  • dsmx #14 2 years ago

    I think the last good C&C game was Red Alert 2 it also marks the last game made by westwood as EA gutted the studio after it was released.

  • chrisjm #15 2 years ago

    im surprised the spelling police havent been in here here yet :)

    oh and far out? back to c&c roots please.

  • Ed6445 #16 2 years ago

    I'm confused, do they mean 'far out' in the sense of 'it's going to be a while before it's released' or 'far out' in the sense it's, like, totally rad? Gosh darned Americanisms!

  • menage #17 2 years ago

    #Fogheart

    Forgot about extraction, ... but so did the rest of the world:D

  • SbEguy #18 2 years ago

    if it's as "far out" as C&C4, no sell.

  • Sunyavadin #19 2 years ago

    " if it's as "far out" as C&C4, no sell. "

    Indeed, if "far our" is their latest euphemism for "shit", it's not on my list.

  • Seehuusen #20 2 years ago

    I for one thought Command & Conquer Renegade was an awesome game for it's time, i absolutely loved it. I'd like to play a renegade 2, gimme gimme!

    Also i agree with the guy above saying Red Alert 2 was the last game worth the C & C title. R.I.P Westwood
    Edited by Seehuusen at 18/10/10 @ 17:55

  • Moarachanox #21 2 years ago

    GO AWAY WITH YOUR C&C GAMES......first you take over Westwood by f them in the a**, than you come with this shit here......give it to to xbox, maybe ms pay you for it aswell, NOT PS3!!

  • RandomTerrain #22 2 years ago

    I hope we get a decent RTS from this. And can we have the option to use a mouse this time? Surely not too much to ask. And yes, Move support makes sense as well.

  • Freki #23 2 years ago

    I quite liked Renegade...

  • MadSnip #24 2 years ago

    Sadly, CandC lost its appeal years ago. And in my opinion, Starcraft still is a superior game even after 12 years.

    That Westwood Studios magic which is hard to describe should be injected back into future CandC games. Or risk going the way of Sonic.

  • metroid455 #25 2 years ago

    to redbarony

    i agree with 100% mate Tiberian Sun was and still is my personal favorite C&C of all time
    i loved everything about it, Firestrom defence FTW
    to be fair i thought tiberium wars was alright and the subsuquent Kane's Rath, but red alert 3 was gob smackingly horrible

  • FortysixterUK #26 2 years ago

    ".....remember the awful Command & Conquer: Renegade from 2002."

    Fuck off EG that was a fine title.
    That's your edge style opinion coming out agan, and you'd done so well to mask that in recent months.

    QUALIFYING STATEMENT:-

    For those that don't understand that comment, I feel , and always have felt, that Edge magazine is the biggest pile of overly self important , over opinionated tripe to grace the printed page since the bible.

    I've often criticised that mag and this wesbites attempt to be like it. I never liked Egde and never liked the way EG seem to try to emulate the Edge magazine culture /journalistic style in the EG website. Hence my spleen venting.

    The only positive I can say for Edge Mag is that the design of the magazine is a wonder to behold , often with tactile and striking covers and wonderful page layout . The actual content sucks however.

  • TheTingler #27 2 years ago

    With the exception of C&C4 I've loved all the C&C games. I expect this to be an action game since Visceral is known for them, and that's okay with me. Tiberium was looking really good, I'd like to see a proper on-the-ground C&C universe title with today's tech.

    And Visceral also made The Godfather and most of EA's James Bond games.

    EDIT: After reading the Gamesutra piece closely, it's not actually Dead Space's Visceral Games that are making the C&C game. Another studio, presumably EA LA (the C&C developer), will be made part of "the Visceral Studios brand". It's under this brand that they're making the game.
    Edited by TheTingler at 19/10/10 @ 02:37