New Command & Conquer, EA studio revealed

[UPDATE] The new Command & Conquer site is now live once again, complete with the Victory Games label and Van Caneghem interview. The original story is below.

Over the long weekend, it appears that someone at Electronic Arts flipped a switch early. On the President's Day holiday, a new Command & Conquer website appeared--and then promptly disappeared, according to several online reports. Website Rock, Paper, Shotgun spotted the prematurely posted site before it was yanked down, and conveyed its contents--which should prove interesting to strategy gaming fans.

First, the site revealed--as now shown by a Google cache page--that EA has created a new sub-studio called Victory Games. With offices in Los Angeles, Texas, and Shanghai, the shop will apparently handle EA's entire strategy portfolio. It will be headed by Jon Van Caneghem, a veteran developer who previously worked for NCsoft, the Trion World Network, and New World Computing (the Might & Magic franchise).

Caneghem says that Victory Games' first project will be a "AAA Command & Conquer game." He continues, "I can tell you it's a Command & Conquer game for the PC, but we're not yet at a stage where I can go into any details--we'll be prepared to make a more formal announcement later in the year. We're not just working on a game, though. Our general focus is on the future of Command & Conquer. That means updating a lot of the core technology to create a stable base for future development, and leveraging that work on this first game."

As of press time, the official website, www.cncstage.com, remained down and EA had declined to elaborate on requests for clarification.