New Dragon Age in early 2011 on consoles, handhelds & PC

Dragon Age was done in what, March? They just needed time to finish the console ports. They've had ample time to start on a sequel.

If the story work (the primary driver) continued unabated during the more technical details of the prequels, both Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 will turn out just fine. The engines used to make both games are perfectly adequate for reuse. Major bug fixes don't need to be performed to keep the engine working. Gameplay formulas exist and don't need to be designed from scratch. Many models already exist. All that really needs to be done is a few tweaks here and there (such as changing the resource gathering portion of ME2, that ruined the pace of the game), possibly adding some variety, building new levels, and, of course, tying the story together, which has been likely going on since the halfway point of the development of Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2.

This isn't like the development world was 10 years ago. New engines aren't built from scratch anymore. The degree of advancement in capability and appearance just isn't drastic enough to warrant a rebuilt every time a new game goes underway. Getting a sequel out for those two games by winter 2011 is not only a reasonable expectation, it will unlikely harm the quality in any way.

Hmmm, when you break it down, a game goes 'Gold' what, two months before the release date? Couple it with the fact that the last couple of months before that, were less 'game developing' than 'polishing and playtesting the shit out of it; for all the know, they could've made 2&3 back to back and moved some more redundant programmers + all of creative staff etc. into ME3 while ME2 was still being tested in a beta. Besides, they already have the new engine completed and have access to all of ME2 assets. ...even assuming they've started 'just now', they still have at least 12 months, which doesn't seem THAT much of a stretch.

Now everyone will see why I needed a skull-gun.

Tell me about the good game and I’ll order the troops to pick you up as a prisoner instead of a corpse.

bradwart youa re the very definition of dicktrash, tell us how you do it *holds microfone to bradwarts mouht*

I'm actually a little confused why Bradward is getting so much flak for this comment. People on Joystiq say that constantly. He was neither being snobish or dickish.

He's getting flak for being insulted constantly. He's been trolled for a while now and it doesn't seem the mods (whoever they might be) are doing much, other than in that one topic. Which reminds me, I think there are some times he could ignore the insults of idiots on the internet with, and try not to respond in kind. Even if he does decrease the number of posts he makes, I think he'll still get insulted.

Or maybe you haven't seen him trolling other topics? Or insulting anyone who disagrees with him? Why do you think he has been banned 3 times from Joystiq (twice in one day, and once before) all for insulting someone who disagreed with him.

It doesn't help that he made rape jokes, and wished death to someone who disagreed with him.

I dare you guys to disagree with him. He will hold onto that grudge forever.

I didn't think Dragon Age: Origin's graphics where that bad when paying on a PC with eyefinity on a dx11 capable card(5870). Maybe on console though it might have been ugly but all console games start to look ugly the more you pc game an the longer its been since the last console refresh. Honestly, lately before playing DA: O, I had been playing some online mmorpgs like wow and offline ones like Never Winter Nights 2. Compared to wow/nwn2, DA: O looked beautiful. Perhaps not Mass Effect 2 beautiful but still pretty freaking good.

"Q4 of its fiscal 2011"

From Ninjawords.com:
fiscal year
noun
°An accounting period of one year, not necessarily coinciding with the calendar year.

The more you know .

Yeah, I thought fiscal 2011 began in April of 2011, not nearly an entire year before 2011 even starts.

Gee, Zertoss, why don't you just google it?

Excellent idea, Zertoss! Q2 of 2010 would be 2nd Quarter: January 1, 2010 - March 31, 2010, so Q4 of 2011 would be 4th Quarter: July 1, 2011 - September 30, 2011.

So there, I was right, and that's all that really matters.

I totally agree with you. I hate it when companies develop games in a series for the cellphone.