Playing Immortals of Aveum, you'd be forgiven for not realizing this is a studio's debut game. Walking onto a castle balcony, seeing bizarre science-fantasy architecture peppering the horizon, the scale of the magical battle happening beneath you, and the polish of it all shows a level of scale we don't typically associate with a first game.

That feeling is very deliberate. Founder and CEO of Ascendent Studios, Bret Robbins, has worked on some very big games in the past, and he didn't want to take a step back in his new venture: "I wanted to make a big game right from the beginning," he tells me. "I'd worked on a lot of big games - I'd worked on Call of Duty for nine years before I started Ascendent, I'd worked on Dead Space, I'd worked on Lord of the Rings, and James Bond. So I was comfortable trying to do something ambitious. I knew that games had gotten so great - so big - these days that, for us to be competitive, I needed to make something big."

Electronic Arts and Ascendant Studios have released a new gameplay trailer for its upcoming fantasy first-person magic shooter, Immortals of Aveum. Based on Unreal Engine 5.1, this single-player FPS will put the player into role of Jak, an Immortal capable of using all three colors of magic. The game is set into original universe and the latest trailer shows what is said to be one of the epic battles in the game, and it surely looks impressive.

Immortals of Aveum could be the first Unreal Engine 5.1 game to be released as it is scheduled to launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 20th. Previously, EA has released rather high PC system requirements, which included either a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB graphics card to run the game at 1440p at 60 FPS, and that is with medium to high game settings.

IGN has been informed by inside sources that Electronic Arts is in negotiations to "offload" ongoing development and support of BioWare's long running MMORPG "Star Wars: The Old Republic" to a third party studio. In a news article published yesterday speculation points to Broadsword Online Games being the prime candidate to takeover a franchise that has been kept alive since December 2011. Broadsword was established about a decade ago by Rob Denton - a former BioWare Vice President and co-founder of Mythic Entertainment - his team currently oversees the running of Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. The IGN news piece notes that Denton previously worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic during its incubation period.

Electronic Arts has since caught wind of IGN's report and provided the news site with their own statement today: "Almost 12 years after launch, Star Wars: The Old Republic remains a success and continues to grow its dedicated and passionate community. We're so proud of the work the team has done, and the future of the game and the community continues to be very bright. We're evaluating how we give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve, which includes conversations with Broadsword, a boutique studio that specializes in delivering online, community-driven experiences. Our goal is to do what is best for the game and its players." The spokesperson's wording on the matter does not fully confirm that Broadsword is fully confirmed to takeover, but IGN's inside information posits that Electronic Arts will remain as the franchise publisher, while BioWare will concentrate on the development of its single-player intellectual properties (Dragon Age and Mass Effect).

Two months ago French developer - 2:21 - announced plans for complete remasters of the quirky mid-to-late Nineties-era Little Big Adventure or Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure/Odyssey (titles were confusingly region dependent back then) games series. The team has paused work on a third entry/reboot, and development of spruced-up versions of the original games has since become the priority - both LBA Remasters are being rebuilt on the Unreal Engine 5 platform, and key members from the old Adeline Software outfit are involved in the remake process.

Ben Limare, the CEO at 2:21, has provided a small update this week - he mentions that a new teaser trailer was debuted at AG French Direct, and now the pre-alpha gameplay footage has been uploaded to YouTube and the company's social media accounts. The introduction states: "Discover the first video and images of the upcoming demo for Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Remastered! Built from the ground up, enjoy new breathtaking visuals, enhanced music and improved, deeper gameplay as Twinsen's Little Big Adventure - Remastered reignites the original TLBA game using the latest next-generation technology." The team reconfirms that a demo version of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 1 Remastered will be playable in June.

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment have released its latest Star Wars Jedi Survivor Patch 5, this is a major one as it is 3.2 GB in size, and brings quite a few performance improvements and fixes. Unfortunately, EA is still working on fixing the issues that should improve the performance on newer Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs with efficiency cores, hopefully these will come with a future update.

According to the full release notes, Patch 5 also improves content caching to reduce hitching, improves thread handling when ray tracing is turned off, and brings a fix where lowering the PC visual settings incorrectly lowers the resolution scale if the FSR is disabled. The release notes also list various performance fixes and stability improvements, as well as a couple of gameplay fixes.

Following on from the reveal of EA SPORTS F1 23 last week, dive into the details you might have missed and more about what to expect ahead of launch on June 16, 2023 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. F1 23's handling and physics have had a significant upgrade on previous years, resulting in better handling, low-speed traction, and overall vehicle driveability. Veteran players will immediately notice a difference, as vehicle behaviour in particular is more authentic thanks to three key areas of reworking: acceleration, braking, and cornering.

Updates to physics calculations for the slip of the tyres and how this interacts with the inertia of the car have been made. Plus, the way each car's engine delivers torque has been refined, with more progressive steps relative to gear and throttle input. On-track surfaces such as kerbs and rumble strips will be noticeably more pronounced, thanks to improvements made to the underfloor of each car, delivering a more true-to-life experience. Adopting feedback from real F1 teams and drivers such as Anthony Davidson, players will notice a closer balance between mechanical grip from tyres and aerodynamic grip from the cars. All these changes result in F1 23 offering the most authentic F1 driving experience around.

Electronic Arts has not included Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in its projected release schedule for the ongoing financial year (2023 to 2024) - industry insiders have previously suggested that the fourth entry in the series was marked down for a later-in-2023 launch. EA's day old financial report details a number of already announced games within a rundown that ends in April 2024. The schedule includes the recently released Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game, as well as Immortal of Aveum, a Lord of the Rings mobile title, F1 23, Madden '24, Sports FC (a FIFA successor) and extra content for Apex Legend and Sims 4. A mystery pair of games are due sometime after April 2024 - a mainline EA Sports title and an unnamed racing sim.

An in-progress Skate sequel joins Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in the far off fields of mid-2024 or beyond. Bioware started to hint about a potential fourth game in late 2018 - with vague promotional material popping up during the autumn Game Awards event. The Edmonton, Canada-based development team has been quietly working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf since then, with very little preview material issued in the interim - a non-gameplay teaser trailer was shown off way back in 2020. Gary McKay, general manager at BioWare, revealed last autumn that the game was fully playable from beginning to end, and recent information suggests that the Dreadwolf team has expanded in size to include Mass Effect series staffers. A former franchise and Bioware veteran, Mark Darrah, was added on as an external (expert) consultant on the project.

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment have detailed the upcoming Star Wars Jedi Survivor Patch 4 that should be coming later today for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and for PC later this week. Previous updates already brought performance improvements for non-raytraced rendering, and this time around, it should update the raytraced performance, at least on the PC.

The Patch 4 brings a handful of both PC-only and PS5-only improvements, and further fixes data handling when toggling ray tracing, improving non-raytraced performance, updates occlusion behavior for ray tracing, updates the streaming budget that should improve traversal hitching, and brings performance improvements for some VFX. There are also several gameplay fixes, various crash fixes, save state errors fixes, and more.

Today Electronic Arts Inc. and EA SPORTS announced that F1 23, the official game of the FIA Formula One World Championship, will be released on June 16 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, via EA App, Epic Games Store, and Steam. Headlined with the return of the epic story mode Braking Point, F1 23 is home to every team, driver and circuit for the 2023 season, including the highly anticipated Las Vegas Grand Prix and Lusail International Circuit, Qatar. Building on the exciting new partnership with Max Verstappen, who now boasts EA SPORTS branding on the chin of his helmet, the back-to-back World Champion is confirmed as the cover star for the digital-exclusive F1 23 Champions Edition.

"The return of Braking Point allows players to immerse themselves in a racing story, which provides a unique look at F1 alongside the authentic race features our players know and love," said Lee Mather, Senior Creative Director at Codemasters. "Our close relationship with the teams has allowed us to refine our handling model, adding greater realism to pad-play, and implementing a new color encoding system used in film and TV creates a more true-to-life experience."

Respawn Entertainment, the Star Wars division at Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games have today released their first patch for the PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - some folks must have been working like mad over the weekend in order to address some of the problems encountered shortly after the game's launch last Friday (April 28). The EA Star Wars Twitter account issued a statement regarding the initial batch of patches for all platforms affected: "Today a patch has become available for the PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and tomorrow (5/2) we'll also be issuing a patch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. We are hard at work on patches that will further improve performance and fix bugs across all platforms. There are more updates to come across all platforms, and we will share that timing when it is available."

The patch notes for today's PC update only mention "performance improvements for non-raytraced rendering" so it seems the developers have a lot more work to do over the coming weeks. The situation on current generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles looks to largely the same, and tomorrow's fix list is extensive (the same problems have already been addressed on PC with today's patch). TPU's own resident reviewer extraordinaire went in-depth and explored Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's technical issues this weekend - part of W1zzard's conclusion was very unkind: "We're now paying $70 to beta-test an unpolished turd that they call an AAA game—not the first time this year. I'm starting to wonder if these companies aren't slowly eroding their customer base by delivering broken products over and over again."

Respawn Entertainment boss Vince Zampella has been engaged in press duties for the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor marketing cycle this week, and is likely having to field questions about the sci-fi action adventure's poor technical performance on PC and consoles alike. In an interview conducted by Barron's Magazine a few days ago, Zampella was probably relieved to have the focus shift to a happier topic - the Titanfall franchise. He seemed to be quite open to the prospect of making a third game: "I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn't come. But I would love to see it happen is the real answer." His studio was founded in order to develop the (multiplayer only) first-person shooter Titanfall (2014), a platform exclusive on PC/Origin and Xbox One. Prior to starting Respawn Entertainment in 2010, Zampella and colleague Jason West were lead designers on the mainline Call of Duty series at Infinity Ward/Activision.

A sequel to the original Titanfall arrived in late 2016 to rave reviews from the press and hardcore fans of the series - the inclusion of a single player campaign was considered to be a highlight - this story campaign borrowed gameplay ideas (to the surprise of many) from Valve's Half Life series, and added time traveling elements to an already mind-bending mobility system. In an unfortunate move for Zampella and Respawn, publisher Electronic Arts decided to launch Titanfall 2 during a very busy release window - the main competition at the time being Activision's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and (EA's own) Battlefield 1. A mainstream crowd proceeded to ignore the Titanfall sequel thanks to poor marketing on EA's part and a crowded games market - sales figures were underwhelming, even with a PS4 version, and the game was heavily discounted within a couple of months of release. Respawn moved on to create a spin-off multiplayer shooter - the smash hit free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends, and the Star Wars Jedi series.

It appears that Electronic Arts' Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game will be yet another title that will need multiple patches to make it playable on the PC, as the game appears to have major CPU and GPU optimization issues. The situation is not better on either the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X consoles. As EA has lifted the review embargo, first details have started to show up online, including rather troubling information that the game can utilize up to 18 GB of VRAM at 1440p resolution.

Gamestar was running the game on AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with 32 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, and it was not able to maintain 50 FPS at 1440p, let alone 4K/UHD resolution. What makes it strange is that the graphics card utilization was around 35 to 60 percent, which means the game has major CPU bottleneck issues. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is officially launching tomorrow, April 28th, so hopefully, we won't have to wait long for EA to release a patch or two.

Immortals of Aveum just got a nice gameplay "first look" trailer, showing some impressive graphics and gameplay for this fantasy first-person magic shooter from Electronic Arts and Ascendant Studios. EA has also published a new blog post detailing the technology used in the game, as well as revealing first PC system requirements.

Immortals of Aveum will be one of the first AAA games developed on Unreal Engine 5.1, featuring some impressive lighting, video, and physics effects. It uses Nanite and Lumen features of the UE 5.1, new micropolygon geometry and global illumination and reflections systems. It also makes use of World Partition, UE 5's method of loading segments of the environment, which will allow for larger play areas.

Summon your power, stop the Everwar, save the realms. Immortals of Aveum is a groundbreaking new single-player, first-person magic shooter, created by Ascendant Studios and released by EA Originals. Experience the story of Jak as he joins an elite order of battlemages to save a world on the edge of abyss. Made by the creators of Call of Duty and Dead Space, Immortals of Aveum is set in an original fantasy universe engulfed in magic, rife with conflict, and on the verge of oblivion. Ascendant Studios is an independent team of veteran developers with BAFTA and Game of the Year award-winning experience, and EA Originals will release the studio's debut title.

Immortals of Aveum is a new single-player shooter with magic-based combat, set in a world ravaged by war. Rich lore meets intense combat in this narrative-driven FPS game, crafted for players who wish to immerse themselves in a daring adventure. Players will take control of the protagonist, Jak (played by Darren Barnett), who unexpectedly manifests magical abilities and is reluctantly thrust into mankind's endless war for the control of magic. Under the tutelage of Grand Magnus Kirkan (Gina Torres), Jak joins the elite battlemages of the Order of the Immortals, and fights to end the Everwar—a world-spanning conflict between the nations of Lucium and Rasharn, each seeking to control access to the magic flowing across the land.

American McGee has been busy (since 2017) with the pre-production phase of his proposed follow up to 2011's Alice: Madness Returns. The third game in the series was going to be called Alice: Asylum, but after recent interactions with Electronic Arts McGee has admitted that: "Alice had a good run but the dream is over." McGee and a team of collaborators (artists, writers, designers, modelers and producers) have contributed to a massive Alice: Asylum Design Bible, and it was hoped that after many years of negotiations with EA, that the large chunk of presentation material would provide enough motivation for the publisher to sign up for a push into full development. The Alice: Asylum Design Bible was financed via fan contributions, through the Patreon crowd funding platform.

The publisher has decided to not finance the Asylum project, and will pursue other routes with the Alice intellectual property. McGee provided an update on the game's Patreon page: "After several weeks of review, EA has come back with a response regarding funding and/or licensing for Alice: Asylum. On the question of funding, they have ultimately decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal. On the question of licensing, they replied that "Alice" is an important part of EA's overall game catalog, and selling or licensing it isn't something they're prepared to do right now."

Electronic Arts has updated the listings for PC system requirements for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and the gaming community has reacted to the refresh of the game's minimum installation storage requisite. It calls for a whopping 155 GB of disk space, for the base game alone, not including the expected routine of patches and extra story content (via DLC). The publisher suggests that an SSD is best used for an optimal in-game experience. The slightly older PC requirements specified a minimum of 150 GB for HDDs, and 130 GB for SSDs.

As it stands, the Respawn Entertainment developed action adventure game has one of the larger minimum storage requirements among modern titles - all the more surprising given that it will offer a relatively short and linear single player experience. Current installations of the PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2 will occupy 150 GB of disk space. Jedi: Fallen Order (2019), Survivor's preceding title in the series, demands a comparatively modest install base of 55 GB. It will be interesting to observe whether Jedi: Survivor will drive sales of larger storage solutions - in the recent past, gamers have scrambled to acquire higher capacity SSDs and HDDs in order to accommodate the ever-growing installations and content drops required to play the Call of Duty/Modern Warfare series.

Last May, Electronic Arts confirmed that its licensing deal with FIFA would be coming to an end by the summer of 2023. This week it has revealed the new branding for the EA Sport FC franchise, which is set to succeed the soon-to-be discontinued EA + FIFA series. Last year EA announced that it would be bringing its 30-year partnership with FIFA to a close. The computer game publishing giant could not agree on a new licensing deal with the association football/soccer governing body. EA Sports has unveiled the new logo and visual language that will feature atop their new flagship football game. It is widely rumored that FIFA are in the process of creating a new and distinct football games franchise with a yet to be revealed development partner.

The sports division has provided a breakdown of the design process: "The new brand takes its design inspiration from triangles, an ever-present shape in the sport and football culture that represents the game in multiple dimensions. From passing techniques to set-plays to formation design, triangles are a constant in the beautiful game. The shape is also woven into the DNA of EA Sports football experiences - from the isometric viewing angles of EA Sports' first football games and triangular polygons that make up every frame, to the chemistry triangles that exist in Ultimate Team or the iconic player indicator symbol that appears above athletes in every match."

BioWare is working quietly on new entries in its long running Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, and not many details have been revealed about either game. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was announced three years ago via a teaser trailer, but the gaming public knows little about the gameplay, lore or visual presentation. The Dreadwolf team has been expanded according to Gary McKay, general manager at BioWare - one of several details he divulged in a partially published interview conducted by GamesBeat. The game is in a post-production phase of development, and McKay confirmed via a blog update that Dreadwolf had reached an alpha milestone in September of 2022: "Now, for the first time, we can experience the entire game, from the opening scenes of the first mission to the very end. We can see, hear, feel, and play everything as a cohesive experience."

Select members of the Mass Effect team have been shifted over to help with late stage production on the fantasy RPG title: "Our studio is focused on creating the best Dragon Age: Dreadwolf while the core Mass Effect team continues their pre-production work." McKay also confirms that a former BioWare veteran has been re-introduced to the team, albeit in an external capacity: "We continue to iterate and polish Dreadwolf, focusing on the things that matter most to our fans. As we further connect this new experience with the series' legacy Mark Darrah will join the team as a consultant, bringing with him years of experience working on Dragon Age."

Electronic Arts is getting ready to lay off upwards of six percent of its workforce, as the company restructures its game portfolio. The company had some 12,900 employees globally in March 2022 according to Games Industry.biz and should as such be laying off some 775 employees. This is far less than we've seen from other companies and it won't affect all of EA's subsidiaries equally. The EA CEO—Andew Wilson—sent out a memo to the company employees that have been posted publicly on EA's website. It seems like EA will make the cuts fairly quickly, as the company is expected to be done informing affected employees sometime early in its next fiscal year, which starts on April first.

It's unclear exactly where EA will be making the cuts and according to Games Industry.biz the company has already trimmed some 200 employees that were working in support, most of them specifically supporting Apex Legends. That said, Apex Legends, EA Sports FIFA 23 and The Sims are the only games mentioned in the announcement, so presumably those titles are safer than others. At the same time, TPU spoke to a contact at a different EA subsidiary and there had been no mention of any redundancies there and the person in question works on another successful series of games. We'll have to wait and see if EA drops any projects the company is working on or if some titles end up being discontinued earlier than expected, due to lack of support from the teams that built the games. Regardless, EA is about to re-focus on what should be its more successful titles, which may or may not be a successful strategy for the company.

As we close in on 15 years since the release of Battlefield 1943, and Bad Company 1 & 2, we are announcing that their journey is coming to an end. Starting April 28 2023, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2 will be removed from digital storefronts and you will no longer be able to purchase them.

This is in preparation for the retirement of the online services for these titles which will happen on December 8 2023. For Bad Company 1 and 2, you can still continue playing them and use their respective offline features, such as the single player campaign. You can also read our FAQ and Service Updates for further information on the retirement of online services.

Update 14:17 UTC: EA updated their press release this morning, to clarify that the inclusion of Mirror's Edge was an error. They stated via Twitter: "We currently have no plans to remove Mirror's Edge from digital storefronts."

Electronic Arts has released the official story trailer for its upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game, that is scheduled to launch on April 28th. The new trailer not only shows the story behind the new Star Wars game but also has some in-game parts.

Developed by Respawn Entertainment in cooperation with Lucasfilm Games, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a third-person, action-adventure game, set five years after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and puts the player again in the role of Cal Kestis, who has now grown into a powerful Jedi Knight.

We're incredibly excited to announce that the Apex Legends team at Respawn will continue to strengthen its development team with the introduction of a brand new studio location in Madison, Wisconsin led by industry veteran Ryan Burnett. Ryan is an extraordinary leader with a proven track record in live service games and as a pillar in the massive mid-western game development community in Madison. With nearly two decades of development experience at places like Raven Software and Epic Games, Ryan has a history of inspiring the sort of creativity and innovation in his teams that is the foundation of games like Apex Legends.

It's been our belief since day one that Respawn is not a singular location but a mindset: when passionate and talented people have creative freedom, they'll achieve the unexpected. This view helped us successfully expand to Vancouver in 2019, and as the workplace evolved, it helped us continue to work with the best that the games industry has to offer, whether at the office, remote, or hybrid.

French developer 2:21 this week announced its intentions to produce remastered versions of its Twinsen's Little Big Adventure games. A planned third game has been delayed beyond 2024, the original intention was to release this sequel in time for the 30th Anniversary of the series, but development has only reached a prototype phase. The remasters will serve as an interim proof of potential to prospective publishers of the third game. These updated versions have been assembled by a small team, with the Unreal Engine 5 serving as the technological base.

The original Little Big Adventure was released and published by Electronic Arts in 1994, and the second in 1997. Activision dealt with the latter's distribution in North America. Certain territories received retitled versions - Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure (1) and Twinsen's Odyssey (2) - this inconsistent branding by market departments caused much confusion during the nascent days of gaming discussion online. The 2:21 team has sought to hybridize the different titles, but the 'Relentless' moniker is no longer part of its new naming system, thankfully.

Ascendant Studios, an independent team of veteran developers with BAFTA and Game of the Year award-winning experience, has partnered with Electronic Arts Inc. EA Originals Label to release the studio's debut title, Immortals of Aveum. Immortals of Aveum is a groundbreaking new single-player, first-person magic shooter that delivers a visceral, cinematic campaign experience. The game is set in an original fantasy universe engulfed in magic, rife with conflict, and on the verge of oblivion. It will release on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC in 2023. Watch the teaser trailer, which debuted at The Game Awards, on the official Immortals of Aveum YouTube channel and follow the game on Twitter and Instagram.

"I was the creative director on four big games in a row, the original Dead Space and three Call of Duty titles, and I had an amazing opportunity to start my own studio and build an incredible team that I'm lucky to work with every day," said Bret Robbins, CEO and Game Director at Ascendant Studios. "I founded Ascendant Studios to make original and epic games, and here we are, four years later, about to finish our first one. What started as a crazy, exciting idea has grown into a crazy, exciting triple-A game. I chose EA as our publishing partner because we know they'll help Immortals of Aveum reach the biggest audience possible. I'm thrilled to have the expertise and resources of EA backing us and I can't wait for everyone to play!"

The galaxy is more dangerous than ever as the next chapter in Cal Kestis' journey begins. Today at The Game Awards, Respawn Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Lucasfilm Games revealed that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on March 17, 2023. During the annual awards show, a first look at gameplay was premiered in a new Official Reveal trailer showcasing Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan) as a stronger and more experienced Jedi Knight while setting up the threats that await him. The veteran team at Respawn Entertainment is developing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the latest generation of gaming hardware to deliver action-packed Jedi combat with the deepest exploration and cinematic gameplay in the series.

"Star Wars Jedi: Survivor evolves the gameplay, story, and exploration from Fallen Order in every way," said Stig Asmussen, game director, Respawn. "Responsive and powerful combat makes players feel like a true Jedi Knight, with new lightsaber skills and Force abilities that add additional layers of strategy to each enemy encounter, and worlds that are filled with environmental challenges that must be overcome to unveil the mysteries within."