EA held its much-anticipated EA Play Live digital event yesterday, and a lot of Star Wars fans have been eagerly waiting to see the promised gameplay trailer for Star Wars: Squadrons. The space combat simulation game will be released on October 2 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows, and it will be one of the first new EA games to support cross-play multiplayer.
This first gameplay trailer did not disappoint, and the game should really appeal to nostalgics of the old X-Wing series on PC. In addition to beautiful graphics, the sound design on Star Wars: Squadrons seems top-notch, and you can see and hear for yourself below:
Overall, EA’s digital event was pretty lacking on new game reveals, but the company had some good news for some of its most popular franchises. The free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends will be released on Steam and Nintendo Switch later this year, and it will also get support for cross-play multiplayer. The company also unveiled a new multiplayer game named Rocket Arena, which will be released on July 14 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Rocket Arena is another EA game that will support cross-play multiplayer, but that won’t be the case for the upcoming Madden NFL 21 and FIFA 21. However, both sports games will support what EA calls “Dual Entitlement,” which means that consumers who purchase the digital PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game will be able to upgrade for free to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions for a limited time. EA won’t be leveraging Smart Delivery on Xbox Series X, but this is still better than nothing.
Bioware was curiously absent from yesterday’s event, so we got no information on the Anthem reboot or Dragon Age 4. However, Jeff Grub from VentureBeat revealed earlier this week that a remaster of the critically-acclaimed Mass Effect trilogy would be coming this year. The trilogy is already available on Xbox One via backwards compatibility, but these beloved games are currently not available on PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch.
