EA announced today that it has signed an exclusive deal with Disney to be the sole publisher of Star Wars games for the foreseeable future. The exclusivity deal only covers games targeting a core gamer audience with Disney’s own mobile division overseeing all casual and mobile titles.

“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” said EA Labels president Frank Gibeau in a statement. “Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”

The three above mentioned studios should make Star Wars fans giddy with glee. All three are respected developers with a proven track record so any Star Wars games out of them should be good. DICE may even finally finish Battlefront III – a game many have been requesting for years now.

As for BioWare, a Star Wars game made by the core team could potentially be exciting as the studio also made Knights of the Old Republic – a title many consider to be the best Star Wars game ever made. Some may be hesitant of such a title, however, especially after BioWare’s The Old Republic failed to live up to the hype. The MMO was made by BioWare Austin, though, so some may be willing to give the main BioWare studio a chance, especially if its Star Wars game is similar to its recent Mass Effect trilogy.

[h/t: Kotaku]

That singleplayer campaign is the focus of the 17 minute gameplayer trailer that accompanied the reveal last night. DICE stresses that everything in the trailer is rendered in game. Battlefield 3 was already a visually impressive game, and Battlefield 4 is already looking like it will set a new benchmark for in-game visuals.

“We are so humbled and proud to debut Battlefield 4 on a global stage with simultaneous events in San Francisco and Stockholm. To be this early in development, and to already be so polished is a huge achievement for the DICE team and reflection of their passion and commitment to driving the franchise forward. Today’s demo was just the beginning — we have so much more in store,” said Patrick Soderlund, Executive Vice President, EA Games Label. “It is thrilling to witness peoples’ reaction when seeing the game for the first time. It really makes you realize that we are at the beginning of a whole new era for gaming. As artists and craftspeople, we are focused on creating a dynamic, open design that brings people together with amazing, surprising unscripted moments that they’ll talk about for days. That’s the beauty of Battlefield.”

Beyond the visuals, it looks like we’ll get more of the solid gameplay that Battlefield is known for. The only unknown is the story, but the early gameplay demo shows promise. DICE has already proven it can tell an entertaining story with the Bad Company series, but it remains to be seen if the developer can do the same thing with a more dramatic turn of events.

Battlefield 4 will be released this fall for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. There’s no mention of next-gen consoles, but a game this pretty is bound to end up on them.

Today, EA released another trailer showing off all the new maps included in the add-on. The four new maps included in the DLC are “Operation Riverside,” “Nebandan Flats,” “Kiasar Railroad,” and Sabalan Pipeline. As shown prominently in the trailer, dirt bikes will also be introduced in “End Game,” as well as a capture the flag game mode, new assignments, new dog tags, and a new dropship that can perform vehicle drops.

Unfortunately, the tailer does not include any actual gameplay, instead opting to show off the new maps and dirt bikes with frozen panorama shots.

First up is Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman. Her company recently announced that it would be shipping out the new Ouya console in June. Listen in to find out what she thinks the future of console gaming holds for us all:

Next up is David Cage, CEO at Quantic Dream. His studio has been pushing interactive storytelling more so than any other AAA studio with games like Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Expect a lot of talk on how the industry gets storytelling all wrong:

Amir Rao, Supergiant Games’ studio director, is up next to talk about Bastion, an indie darling from 2011:

Rounding out the keynotes is Glen Schofield, founder of Sledgehammer Games. Before helping out Infinity Ward on Call of Duty, he was VP of Visceral Games and creator of Dead Space.

Unfortunately, the video of his talk with Abrams has not been uploaded just yet. From reports out of the show, it sounds like it was pretty entertaining. As a bonus, the two announced their plans to work together on Portal and Half-Life films.

Today, Newell delivered the opening keynote on the future of Valve and the industry as a whole. Fortunately, that has been uploaded, and you can watch it all below. There’s some fascinating insights into how Newell views PC gaming as the next big thing, and what Valve is doing to capitalize on it.

For a company as secretive as Valve, it’s been nice to see Newell speaking so frankly at so many events over the past few months. That being said, I don’t think we’re going to start seeing Half-Life 3 details sprouting up anytime soon. Still, it’s nice to hear industry insight from one of the most ambitious and innovate men in the business.

Thankfully, EA and DICE are still supporting last year’s Battlefield 3, which was a hit and well-received. Today EA released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Battlefield 3 DLC. Titled “End Game,” the add-on will feature four new multiplayer maps “designed for high speed combat and action.” New vehicles are included as well, including the dirt bikes that feature heavily in the trailer. Also, the capture the flag game mode will be part of the add-on, as well as a dropship that can perform vehicle drops.

“When we launched Battlefield 1942 ten years ago, we had lofty ambitions to create a first-person shooter that would push the boundaries of innovation, creativity and design,” said Karl Magnus Troedsson, General Manager of DICE. “We evolved the FPS gameplay formula by introducing the world to all-out warfare via land, air and sea. Since the beginning, the reception to the Battlefield series has been incredible thanks to our amazing fans. Every day, we strive to provide our community with great games and new ways to play as evident with Battlefield 3 Premium. We wanted to thank our fans who have supported us throughout the years by restoring Battlefield 1942 for a digital re-release and give everyone a chance to play the game that started it all.”

EA doesn’t have a new military shooter out this year to compete with Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. There was Medal of Honor Warfighter, but that game received poor reviews that weren’t even related to the massive day-one patch gamers had to download to make the game playable.

So, instead of marketing Warfighter, EA is pushing subscriptions to its Battlefield 3 Premium service, which gives players access to new maps, weapons, vehicles, and game modes. The publisher announced as part of its second quarter financial results that it has already gotten 2 million Battlefield players to fork over $50 for the service.

In an interview with Games Industry International, EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau said:

“We’ve launched subscription businesses in our other categories. We had EA Sports subscription before Elite came out, so adding that component to the design is not a reaction. It’s something we’d always been considering and we had been looking at. We didn’t have it ready for launch and it took us some time to get it prepped. Having said that, they [Activision] did something really innovative and if your competitor does something innovative and you think it applies to what you can do, then there’s no harm in doing that,” he said. “This is an industry where people have a lot of oneupsmanship and if somebody innovates, you match it or you exceed it.”

With the success that EA has achieved with first its sports subscription and now Battlefield 3 Premium, we can all look forward to the day when we get the Need For Speed Premium emails from Origin. Then what is next is obvious. I think that eventually you will only be able to purchase DLC in gigantic $50-$60 “premium” packs. so that the developers can “justify’ the fact that they “only” charge you $60 to “buy” a game. Lots of quotations expresses the severe sarcasm in my remarks.

Here is the who, what, where, when, and why of the double XP event:

July Double XP event

- What: Double your net score after every round

-Who: All players

-When: July 2-8 for Premium members, July 2-4 for non-Premium members

-Starts: 00:01 PDT/07:01 UTC July 2 (click link for handy time conversion tool)

-Ends for non-Premium members: 13:00 PDT/20:00 UTC July 4

-Ends for Premium members: 23:59 PDT July 8/06:59 UTC July 9

So there you go. Non-subscribers get the event from today through midday on Wednesday, and Premium members get it until July 8th. The double XP events are truly worth your time if you are a low level and trying to get that precious USAS 12 unlock. It is not uncommon to have a 60,000 point round these days with all of the “special events!”

Here is the trailer for the “Close Quarters” DLC maps and the pure destruction and double XP goodness that can come with the maps:

From my personal experience with the Battlefield franchise and in dealing with DICE, the amount of content, double XP events, and new content is well worth the price of $50. The only problem is that this will now mean that nearly every Battlefield game from now until forever will cost me $110 from the get go because these games will now launch with the premium service.

Battlefield 3 had a lot of huge problems when it first launched, all of which have been solved. To have a new service like this show that there are still near 1 million active players that will be enjoying this game until at least March when the last bit of DLC comes out, shows how robust the Battlefield community really is.

Here is the official Battlefield 3 Premium launch trailer that actually showed of some pretty cool stuff like the addition of dirt bikes: