Alex said:
By the way, to anyone wondering what Jaesun is talking about, there was talk of a Facebook remake of Ultima 4, which EA was producing. I wonder if you will be able to boost your friends virtues...
It's interestingly you mention that. I was working on a news article for this, but I don't think it's going to be an AAA RPG title. It will be either Facebook or a browser crap, so I gave up on it (as that really isn't Prestigious enough for RPG Codex).
Anyways here is the fragmented article:
Something Ultima this way comes
Back before Bioware's
life-force was slowly sucked out and then enslaved to crank out Action games eventual acquisition by EA, it has been rumored Obsidian Entertainment were in talks with EA on doing some kind of Ultima game
as mentioned by Desslock:
Obsidian doing an Ultima game very nearly happened - the deal fell apart very late over contract negotiations. That was a while ago though, prior to current management of EA taking control and bringing BioWare into the company.
Also much earlier, Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum with the help of Bioware Mythic and with EA's approval, began to go through countless boxes of CD's and other items associated with Origins past....
Then our Ultima BRO™ WTF Dragon's website
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ started reporting some rather odd tweets from the Bioware Mythic team.
At this time, it's either a free release of Wing Commander (or perhaps some new edition shipped with DOSBox) for GOG or steam, or an Ultima IV browser remake, or possibly a new higher-resolution Ultima Online, or a new facebook/browser Ultima. The speculation is just too much right now. But we will possibly be hearing something solid soon....
I'm just not convinced it's a proper AAA RPG (that I'd be willing to bet money on) that Obsidian was attempting to negotiate with EA.
But we can always hope... right?