We played a few games of 5v5 multiplayer, GDI vs Nod, on one map. The goal was to capture and hold five areas on the map; holding more than your opponents raised your team's points faster than theirs, and the first to reach a points cap won. Actual cash appeared to have no relevance whatsoever, but matters were complicated with occasionally-spawning Tiberium crystals. When brought back to friendly bases, these furnished your team with upgrade points that could be used to increase, say, railgun range, or explosive damage, or even level up your Crawler further.

Despite all of the changes - no real bases, Crawlers are mobile and can respawn, lack of cash, take-and-hold gameplay - it felt familiar enough that it was very, very hard to shake off the usual concepts of the genre. As soon as I began, I sat my Crawler down and had it start pumping out as many units as my command cap would hold. Then I realised that two of my allies had started wandering off towards points with their Crawlers, building units on the way.

Ah. Right. I don't have to stay at the starting point...

"We will be hiring back positions in low-cost locations to maintain capacity," he said at the BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference in New York, which was broadcast over the Internet.

Brown didn't specify how many workers the Redwood City, Calif.-based company expected to hire, nor did he say when and where those hires would occur.

EA said this week that it expects to save at least $100 million annually by closing several facilities and eliminating 1,500 jobs by next March. The cuts, which follow the closure of development and publishing facilities a year ago, will enable EA to focus on fewer games amid an industry-wide slump.