Time for a little recap. Back in May EA were talking to investors in one of their regular earnings calls and discussing their upcoming plans.
“We are planning to launch 14 new titles to players this fiscal year,” commented EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson. “That includes four new EA Sports titles — FIFA, Madden, NHL, and one more unannounced sports game — all of which deliver on the mix of creativity, authenticity, and quality that sets EA Sports apart. … Our FY21 plans also include four more games drawing on the breadth of our IP, from Command & Conquer Remastered to unannounced games for our console and PC players. We’ll have more games from indie developers launching this year through EA Partners, and two new mobile titles leveraging top IP that we’ll bring to players worldwide.”
According to Venturebeat the eighth title out of those fourteen games is a “HD remake of an EA game”, “and that HD remaster of an EA game is the Mass Effect Trilogy.”
Then, in July we found out that “Art of the Mass Effect Trilogy: Expanded Edition” will be hitting store shelves next year on March 23rd and, like previous Mass Effect art books and graphic novels, will be published by Dark Horse Comics. It seems very odd that a book based on game that hasn’t been on the shelves since 2017 is being published in 2021, that is unless there’s a new/old game on the way.
That brings us up to date and on to GamesBeat journalist Jeff Grub who claims the remastered games may be out this October. “Up until like this last week, I know the plan for sure was to announce it in early October, release in later in October. So good news,” he said on the Gamesbeat podcast. However, he then tempered expectations by adding “Maybe bad news, it’s 2020, maybe that could start to slip, it sounds like maybe that’s a possibility, nothing for sure yet. I know it’s real. I’ve seen more than enough evidence to know it’s real, but it’s still 2020 and they haven’t announced it yet.”
Personally I don’t think we will see the game in October, EA have FIFA 21, Madden 21, NHL 21, and Star Wars: Squadrons all launching in October, that’s already a huge number of games for them to try and sell and promote, they don’t need a another. They also have a couple of indie titles, Lost in Random and It Takes Two out before the end of the year, a remaster seems better suited to release early next year, maybe at the start in January when everyone has gift cards to spend.
Source: YouTube
