Hi everyone,

I hope everyone is enjoying one of the best years ever for PC gaming.

On the eve of one of our own major releases, The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™, the one thing we've grown to understand is how important the community - our most loyal supporters - is for industry. This started back in our days at Westwood where the community for our games has always been a big priority. We understand that you are the most important and influential group for us and we are constantly amazed at the amount of talent used to create quality assets and mods.

Having said that, we have a MAJOR announcement to make and we are making it exclusively to our long time C&C fans. This announcement is not going out to the press and it won't appear on the EA website or anywhere else online. We are very proud to announce that the team that brought you Command & Conquer™ Red Alert 2™, Command & Conquer™ Yuri's Revenge™, and Command & Conquer™ Generals has officially started work on our next project set in the Red Alert universe!

As I mentioned, we're very proud to ship what we feel is one of the best RTS games ever released. Most of you have probably heard of The Lord of the Rings™, The Battle for Middle-earth™ which hits stores this week. We've introduced some really innovative features and gameplay mechanics, which you should definitely check out when you get a chance. You will also see a major enhancement to the Sage graphics engine we originally created for Command & Conquer Generals. Expect us to leverage and continue to evolve this powerful engine as we start work on our new Command & Conquer game.

Thanks again for all your support over the years. This entire team is incredibly excited to work on the next Command & Conquer chapter. Look for an official announcement soon and have a wonderful holiday.

Mark Skaggs
VP and Executive Producer
Electronic Arts

Rottenmann, Austria, 14th of December 2004: JoWooD Productions continues its successful cooperation with the German developer Piranha Bytes by publishing one of the most spectacular titles of the coming year: Gothic III, the third part of the legendary RPG saga. "Being listed in all major 'most wanted' charts across Europe, Gothic III is the top title of the coming year. To publish a game with such popularity, potential and quality, is a great chance for us to push a world-wide known brand even further" ,comments Andreas Tobler, CEO of JoWooD Productions Software AG. JoWooD Productions takes this chance and will try to break RPG selling records of the past!

A free demo of Half-Life 2 has been released. Featuring some of the amazing digital actors and physical gameplay that has made Half-Life 2 the leading contender for Game of the Year 2004, the demo takes players through some of the early levels of the game and later transports them to the area of the game known as Ravenholm.

Sega and Take Two responded by saying it would not crush them financially, but would stop the integrity of developing a better game each year. Also, the days of ESPN's $19.99 NFL games are over. EA pretty much bought the rights to ensure you pay $50 or more their title. With no competition, will EA Sports put forth the effort to better the game? I can't believe that such a thing has happened, or let happen by all the money hungry parties.

I have stated before how EA sports releases "patches" every year and calls them "games." Madden NFL is not worth $50 every year. EA has shown it's greed before by stating there is more money to take from the gamers and we will take it. I was so happy when EA's President moved on allowing XBOX LIVE fans to enjoy all EA sports titles, but I never saw the buy out from EA, or is it the sell out of the NFL and Players INC? The NFL players are so well taken care of financially that I can't see why it is necessary to cheat videogamers out of a competitive market of NFL games.