Pandemic may have closed down but the Mercenaries franchise will still be going strong. Staying true to their earlier statements that Pandemic's key franchises will live on, Electronic Arts recently announced that a new Mercenaries game is on the way.

Rumors have gone around that LMNO, Steven Spielberg's game in development, has kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Checked out. Bit the dust. What have you.

Well... it's not true. The game is alive and well, pictured holding up today's newspaper.

EALA has finally come clean on what the deal is with placing the PlayStation 3 version of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) on hold. He said that the issues were rooted on the game engine being unsuitable for the system's "exotic" architecture. More in the full article up next.

This just in: 11-year EA veteran Neil Young left his position in the company. Details were kept pretty vague, but the word is that he's out for a "new project." Why did he leave and who's going to take his place? Details after the jump.

Granted, the video game console is rapidly becoming saturated with the same genres: shooters, action, sports, sandbox. Innovation did happen, but a lot of it was stove-piped, locked within the genre rather than in the greater world of console gaming itself.

Brave is a title that bucks conventions and is willing to take risks. One more recent development was bringing the traditionally PC-centric real-time strategy genre to consoles, which until games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Battle for Middle-Earth II, were rather clunky and painful affairs. But now, we have Command & Conquer 3, and Ensemble is spinning Halo Wars up to speed.

In the same vein I'm taking another PC-centric game genre and looking at its chances in console gaming. Except this time, unlike RTS games, I'm less confident about its chances - not because it can't be done, but out of the fear that just like innovation, interests in console gaming are rather stove-piped as well. And for the most part, the console is locked to shooters, action, sports, and sandbox.

Pity, really. Consoles could be a potential breakout ground for the submarine simulator.

Thar she blows up, Cap'n. Appreciation - and cynicism - for console subsims after the jump.

The latest iteration of the Medal of Honor series - Medal of Honor: Airborne - is slated to land Europe on August 31. Electronic Arts (EA) will be releasing the game on three different platforms: the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC.

The installment is considered significantly different from previous MOA games. It's billed to have free-roaming gameplay style which offers players more options on where to stage their assault. The game also boasts of five different operations such as Operation Husky and Operation Market Garden in which the American airborne division of the time took part in. EALA">Neil Young, Vice President and General Manager of EALA, has this to say about their game:

Medal of Honor: Airborne is a new direction for the franchise introducing innovations that redefine the series as well as impact the FPS genre as a whole. We can’t wait for August when everyone can experience the new Medal of Honor, the first WWII game that allows the player to land anywhere and truly fight the way they want to.

So far the game has not yet been rated by PEGI or the USK, so we're not sure (although we doubt) that young children should be allowed to play the game. Fans of the series should really be watching out for this, because this may mark a turning point for the series.

Could we blame skeptics from saying that "console RTS" won't work? Real-time strategy (RTS) and its close cousin, real-time tactics (RTT), have always been the domain of the personal computer, with its mouse and keyboard. The traditional console controller is ill-suited for the rigors of battle strategy. And with some disappointing attempts to port PC RTS titles to consoles - including the early Command & Conquer titles to PSOne and StarCraft on the N64 - somehow the cry went up from both sides of the gaming world: stick to the status quo.

This is where Electronic Arts, stubborn EA, comes in. Criticized as they are for a number of gaffes in the past year (alone), we'd always held that sometimes, even they can get some things right, or at least good enough. Backing EALA's bold attempts to put RTS into console gaming (starting with The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II) might be one of them. And now a bolt from the blue dev, Tiki Games, plans to craft a real-time strategy title for, among others, the handheld PSP.

A crazy effort - ludicrous, even? Or is it finally time some boundaries are breached, some lines blurred? Is the core idea of real-time strategy breaking free (because there's not a star in heaven that they can't reach)? Short of beating the 360 Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars out of EALA right now for a review, we try instead to deconstruct the idea behind strategy games, and see where they fit in the matrix of the gaming console.

Short version of the verdict: it can, and it will - if you're willing to be as wily as Sun Tzu on a coffee high, that is.

Sun Tzu says: Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Intelligence analysis of strategy gaming on consoles after the jump, Commander.

Would you be surprised if EALA's Mike Glosecki, Senior Producer for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, told Gamespot that the 360 C&C3 pathfinder, Battle for Middle Earth II (360), isn't the runaway success they hoped it would be (it only sold less than 150,000 copies)? And yet they still want to bring the upcoming PC installment of the C&C series onto the 360 as they're still out to prove that Kane and Co. can be a console thing, too.

Well, Mike reveals that the 360 version will get some exclusive Xbox Live multiplayer game modes that won't be on the PC. There's going to be a Capture the Flag mode - no need to elaborate on that - and Conquer and Siege modes. In both modes, rushing is in one way or another disabled.

• In Conquer, players build their armies to a set point limit (based on unit cost or population? Mike doesn't say which) and then fight in a no-reinforcements battle to the bitter (and probably quick) end.
• In Siege, a wall of energy blocks players from attacking each other. Players get five minutes to set up their offenses or defenses in absolute peace, before the barrier dissipates and all hell breaks loose.

Mike also says that Xbox Live Vision will be supported by the game. Yes, we're talking about video chat in the lobby, in the game, and if you pwn them, as Mike says there's going to be a "Winner's Circle" feature where the victor can trash the loser/s' n00bish RTS skills (apparently there is no avoiding this torture if you're a loser. Unless you shut your TV off after losing...).

And on seeing the game on the PS3? Says Mike,

"Absolutely. I think that we've opened the door for many developers by showing that it can be done and done well. There certainly are no real hardware barriers; both systems are capable of running a very rich-looking and terrific-playing high-end RTS game. (Though) We currently do not have plans for a PS3 RTS game, but bringing an RTS to the PS3 is certainly a possibility in the future."

We ourselves are tempted to ask about a Wii-fied C&C, but maybe not. Okay, back to the Xbox. Downloadable content? "We are currently looking at the types of new content that we can provide for Xbox Live Marketplace and will keep you posted." Oh boy, we're talking about EA, right? Just promise that the game on the disc will be a complete game, and the Marketplace stuff will be new, unreleased content (pinups of Tricia Helfer, perhaps?), and we're not going to cry bloody heck.