Electronic Arts announced that its upcoming sports titles for the Wii, including Madden NFL 08, NBA Live 08, and FIFA 08, will feature a new mode of play designed to make playing the games even more accessible to non-gamers.

The “simplified control system”, dubbed ‘EA Sports Family Play,’ was designed so that family members can play against other more experienced players using the games’ normal controls “without a competitive disadvantage.” While using this mode of play, players will use just the Wii remote, instead of the normal tandem of remote and nunchuck.

With the Wii remote, players control key actions, such as shooting, passing, snapping, and throwing, while the console controls the rest. Think of it as training wheels to help novice players along until they are ready to gradually begin to using the more advanced controls afforded by the nunchuk.

Paradox Interactive has announced that the company has acquired the intellectual property rights to the PC real-time strategy series Majesty, with plans to revisit the title and “further strengthen the franchise.”

Developed by Cyberlore Studios, Majesty was first released in 2000 as Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim from Microprose. The game was later followed up a year later with Majesty: The Northern Expansion and a “Gold Edition” box set containing both titles in 2002.

In addition, as part of today’s announcement, this Gold Edition is now available over Paradox’s GamersGate digital distribution portal, where it joins other strategy titles such as UFO: Extraterrestrials, Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood, and Europa Universalis III.

“We strongly feel that Majesty deserves to be revitalized and there are few gaming companies out there capable of taking this franchise to the next level”, said Lester Humphreys, Founder of Cyberlore Studios. “There is no question in our minds that Paradox Interactive is the right company to do just that.”

French developer Quantic Dream, the studio behind 3D adventure games Omikron and Indigo Prophecy, has partnered with with Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios for an as yet unannounced PlayStation 3 exclusive, with more details expected to be announced soon.

While little has been revealed as of yet, the companies note that the project “is expected to set a new benchmark in delivering emotionally compelling experiences to gamers.” Michael Denny, SCE Worldwide Studios’ vice president added belief that the game will “push the gaming experience to realise a new level of interactivity and, in particular, to engage players at an emotional level never experienced before.”

Here’s hoping the game will play a role in Sony’s upcoming E3 festivities.

With E3 on our doorsteps, there are few games I’m as itching to get my hands on as Harmonix and EA’s Rock Band. The game, according to this latest gameplay video first posted by GameSpot, seems to be shaping to to be a natural evolution of the Guitar Hero brand, rather than something wholly different. It is as if Guitar Hero somehow grew lungs, climbed out of the pool and tasted air for the first time.

And I’m okay with that.

Very okay, since from the looks of things I won’t have to perfect a whole new skillset, just build upon what I already know. I’m very curious to see how the game feels, and I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, as Harmonix, EA, and MTV will be hosting a party next week in Santa Monica as part of the annual E3 festivities, which I will me attending (along with, according to the invite, some “super secret special guests”). So the question remains, should I take the mic?

Expect lots of impressions and personal embarrassment in the days ahead.

[Update: Harmonix has issued a response to this apparently leaked video with a post on its official forums:

[quote]The video of a trailer you may have seen on various sites was taken from a conference where attendees are generally encouraged to be casual and show off the new stuff they are working on privately. Apparently an attendee videotaped the talk.

The trailer was made from an old build of the game quite some time ago for internal purposes- basically to get people working on the game excited. The song was one we have considered for the game but haven?t locked down, and you may have noticed that the trailer footage was made so long ago that the people in the video are playing old instruments and prototypes.

I guess what I am saying is- this isn’t official and doesn’t really reflect the final game at all. We’ll be releasing a lot of info next week from much newer builds of the game with finalized songs.[/quote]]