EA have rushed to fill the Oblivion-sized gap in their line-up with the launch of "Project Gray Company". With phrases like "expansive open world setting" and producer Steve Gray's choose your own adventure comments, it's obvious the Bethesda's epic is the main inspiration. In fact, reading his comments again I'm surprised he didn't go the whole hog and mention horse armour and Sean Bean.
RPG's used to be a hardcore niche but the success of World of Warcraft (6 million addicts/subscribers and rising) and Oblivion (over 1.7 million sales to date) has clearly had an impact at the world's biggest publisher. Even though EA had numerous million sellers in 2005 they were primarily franchise updates - relatively easy quick wins. Creating an RPG from scratch is a much tougher proposition, especially if sales are likely to be similar to, say, a *relatively* easy to develop new Burnout game. The key question then - how much time will EA allow for development? WoW and Oblivion took over 4 years to create - will "Gray Company" be given the development time that it will need to match, never mind better, these classics?
