EA announces Rock Band for the Wii; delays two others @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on February 01, 2008

News: And confirms BioWare's Dragon Age is coming in 2008.

Yesterday, EA held their quarterly conference call for investors and made a few big announcements. The first is the obvious news of delays with Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Battlefield: Bad Company both being pushed back into EA's 2009 fiscal year (April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009). CEO John Riccitiello confirmed the titles need more "polish" and had this to say:

We have made the decision to move Battlefield: Bad Company and Mercenaries 2 into fiscal 2009. Both titles are looking great and we believe with additional polish, we will build a better consumer experience and thereby maximize our economics.

Later in the call, Vice President Warren Jenson announced the "new" titles EA expects to ship in their 2009 fiscal year and it includes several titles we know about and several titles we don't:

We expect to launch over 10 new titles including Spore, Dead Space, Battlefield: Bad Company, Dragon Age, Boom Blox, Monopoly, Mercenaries 2, UEFA Soccer, Lord of the Rings, Mirror's Edge, Tiberium, SimAnimals, Saboteur and FaceBreaker.

So for those keeping track at home, besides the stuff we already know about, EA plans to release BioWare's long-in-development RPG Dragon Age, a new (and unannounced) Lord of the Rings game and something called SimAnimals.

John Riccitiello closed the call with perhaps the biggest news. Rock Band is officially coming to the Wii and will finally release in Europe ths year:

In terms of pacing the next few quarters, you are probably well aware of the more than $2.5 million music downloads that have occurred on Rock Band and that's a good part of the business. But what's probably the most interesting piece right now is the coming launch on the Wii, the continued sale of the core platforms in North America, and then the fiscal '09 launch across Europe against all the SKUs.

We'll have more soon.