Mass Effect PC golden

With just four weeks remaining until Mass Effect on the PC was scheduled to stack up alongside Boom Blox and Speed Racer at retail, Electronic Arts and BioWare abruptly hit the brakes last month. According to BioWare community administrator Chris Priestly, the game would now incubate until May 28 so that the team could "incorporate more play-testing feedback, add extra polish, and tune the additional features."

The kinks now sufficiently ironed, BioWare said today that the PC edition of Mass Effect has entered mass production and is on schedule for its May 28 release in North America and June 6 debut in Europe. BioWare collaborated with Massachusetts-based Demiurge Studios on the PC edition of Mass Effect.

As for those aforementioned tweaks, the PC edition offers a suite of additions to the 360 version, with the most visible being a reworked heads-up display and inventory-management system. The game also touts a new control scheme optimized for PCs, individual control over squad members, and a new decryption minigames. Mass Effect PC purchasers who also register with BioWare's community site will also have immediate access to the Bring Down the Sky downloadable expansion free of charge.

EA is looking to stimulate preorders by knocking off $10 from the game's $49.99 sticker price for those who buy in advance, among other incentives. Responding to public outcry, the publisher also did away with the game's controversial digital rights management protocol, which would have required the game to be reauthenticated every 10 days as a security measure.