The recent Street Trace: NYC community event has led to a blowout in not just Street Trace news but Wing Commander Arena news! The most important of which comes straight from DaKing240, who you may recall dropped hints prior to the WCA announcement about it's existence. Still, remember to take this with a grain of salt. According to DaKing240, Wing Commander Arena will be "coming soon... my guess is within 3-4 weeks".

Next up is that Gamertag Radio has released a podcast containing an interview with Gaia industries about Street Trace: NYC and a bit about Wing Commander Arena. The Wing Commander CIC has transcribed the Wing Commander Arena portion and posted it on their site, but of course you can always listen to the excellent Gamertag Radio for the full interview. They also took this lovely shaky cam.

Lastly, Wondermonkey2k has posted a few pictures from the event on his Flickr account.

The fly boys over at the Wing Commander CIC have pieced together all known information about the ships of Wing Commander Arena. The page goes into brief detail about what each ships role is and also shows the historical accuracy of the models for Arena vs old school Wing Commander. The information should give any of you who are green to the WC universe a bit of a chance to catch up on just what are the ships and what they will more than likely be good at.

EA has launched a new dedicated official EA Xbox Live Arcade website with information about their games and forums. Currently, the website has four slots for upcoming games with two of them being filled by Wing Commander Arena and Boom Boom Rocket and another two blank. This makes me wonder if either 1) EA has two other titles that are currently well into development or 2) the designers felt the need to reserve that space for future use. Only time will tell how soon the third and fourth titles from EA will be revealed.

[Via Wing Commander CIC]

1up has a [url=http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3157440]hands-on preview of Wing Commander Arena[/url], which goes somewhat in-depth into how the game will work. The preview covers the type of cameras, multiplayer game modes, ships (18 total) and the controls. As you will see from the video below, the game looks amazing. Regular commentor, McLean78, called out earlier that this game looks like it will be 2D in a 3D world, which can be clearly seen from the video.

Reader Prym3 pointed out that [url=http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/sim/wingcommanderarena/screenindex.html]Gamespot has six screenshots of Wing Commander Arena[/url] available on their site and rejoice for it looks to be an entirely new 3D Wing Commander game.

The [url=http://xblarcade.com/node/417]rumor[/url] is true. Wing Commander Arena has been confirmed for Xbox Live Arcade. The [url=http://www.ea.com/article.jsp?dcr=ea&id=wca]press release[/url] (below) hit the internet today and explains the game in detail, but I'm still wondering if this is a 2D or a 3D game. The game itself is being developed by Gaia Industries, who are also releasing [url=http://xblarcade.com/taxonomy/term/99]Street Trace: NYC[/url] soon.

EA Launches Wing Commander Arena onto Xbox Live Arcade Legendary Game Franchise Delivers 16-Player Online Space Combat Redwood City, Calif., - February 23, 2007 - Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced the return of its beloved Wing Commander™ franchise with Wing Commander Arena in development for the Xbox LIVE® Arcade*. With up to 16 players, Wing Commander Arena offers the largest multi-player melee experience to date on Xbox LIVE Arcade. The game is scheduled to go live worldwide on the Arcade service in Summer 2007. Wing Commander Arena is a fast-paced space combat game where players can team up to attack other teams of ships. The game introduces the classic franchise to an arcade-style experience that allows up to 16 players online in battle at once. Players can propel their customized ship through space, fire torpedoes and unleash deadly gravity bombs as they try to climb the leader board. Online players will compete for Frag count, high score and dueling stats. "We're really excited to deliver unparalleled multi-player arcade action," said Chip Lange, EA Vice President. "The design for Wing Commander will appeal to both long-time fans of the franchise and immediately engage anyone who wants the melee style action of an arcade shooter." Wing Commander Arena will feature four styles of play: single player, multi-team, multi-player free for all and multi-player duel. Within the game there are eight game maps that include team maps, free for all maps and dueling maps, so Wing Commander Arena offers a gameplay experience for every Arcade gamer, whether they want a quick ten minutes of action or a longer more immersive game.