Electronic Arts to Release 38 Studios’ Project Mercury

Electronic Arts will release the first game from 38 Studios. The RPG in question is currently known as ‘Project Mercury’ and will be released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. 38 Studios subsidiary Big Huge is developing the game.

Publisher Electronic Arts made the distribution deal Tuesday familiar. 38 Studios was founded by ex-baseball player Curt Schilling and is named after his player number. The developer has no titles to his name yet, and the studio’s first game will be developed by subsidiary company Big Huge Games. This developer was acquired from THQ in May last year.

It had been known for some time that Big Huge was working on a new RPG; this was apparent from a number of job advertisements in October. Little is known about ‘Project Mercury’, except that the RPG is set in a fictional world and that fantasy writer Robert Anthony Salvatore has been brought in for the screenplay. Remarkable enough announced 38 Studios also developed a mmorpg more than two years ago, which was hidden under the project name ‘Copernicus’ and which would also be based on a story by Salvatore.

Schilling reported at the time that cartoonist Todd McFarlane had been recruited for the game’s artistic development. McFarlane would also work on Project Mercury again. In addition, the mmorpg would appear ‘late 2010,’ Schilling said at the time. It is unclear whether it is the same game and the mmorpg has become a single player game, or whether there are two different games.