Exclusive: EA's Young Confirms, Discusses Revolution Development

Speaking to Gamasutra at the recent 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, Electronic Arts Los Angeles Vice President and General Manager Neil Young has commented on his impressions of Nintendo's much-awaited Revolution console, confirming in the process that Electronic Arts is currently building Revolution titles. Young, who is the former President of Origin Systems and also helped build early ARG Majestic, before helping to head up EA's Lord Of The Rings titles and moving down to oversee EA's Los Angeles studio, from where he revealed the next-gen Medal Of Honor title at a keynote for last year's Tokyo Game Show, is notable for speaking his mind on game design related topics as well as high-level business trends. Talking to Gamasutra on his own thoughts for the Revolution, Young commented: "One of the challenges for the Revolution is that it's not HD. If you think about RTS games, one element is the control scheme, but the other is the distance from the TV screen when you're playing a console game versus a PC game." He continued, referencing the soon-to-be-released console SKU of the EALA-produced real time strategy title: "One of the reasons Battle for Middle Earth II works so well on the [Xbox] 360 is the controller, but the other reason is the HD - you can see everything, frankly, as well or better as you can when you're [as close as you would be to a PC]." Young concluded of his own personal Revolution impressions: "So I think there are some questions there, and the other issue is performance. The hardware performance is sort of current gen plus, versus the 10x or 20x multiple that you get on next-gen. I mean, EA is building stuff for it, but I kind of prefer the DS. It makes the most sense to me." Further excerpts from GDC interviews with Young and other major game development figures will be posted on Gamasutra over the next few days.