DICE Announces New Game, EA Partnership

Swedish-headquartered developer DICE, which most recently developed Battlefield 2 for Electronic Arts, following EA's successful battle to gain a majority share in the company, has announced that it is developing a new PC game to debut in late 2006. According to an official DICE statement, the game, being developed at the company's Stockholm headquarters, "is based on Digital Illusions’ brand", presumably meaning that it is another title in the successful Battlefield series that commences with Battlefield 1942, although this is not specifically stated. In addition, and likely due to the company's majority ownership by EA and its relatively small size for multi-SKU development, the company has announced that it has licensed the right to develop the PSP, Xbox and PS2 versions of the untitled new game to Electronic Arts' UK studio in Chertsey. This studio has already been involved in converting other titles originated by other studios, reportedly developing Burnout Legends for the PSP separately of series originator Criterion. A statement from DICE regarding this explains: "For the moment, the Company does not have sufficient personnel resources to simultaneously develop several different games for all significant platforms. For Digital Illusions it is therefore an attractive solution to license out the production for certain platform versions, because it enables the Company to obtain a greater product portfolio without additional costs." In addition, it has been announced that the PSP version of Battlefield 2 has been put on hold - it was originally to debut in Spring 2006. However, the Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions of Battlefield 2 will still ship this holiday season, with an Xbox 360 version confirmed for Spring 2006.