Victory Games' Command & Conquer, built on EA's Frostbite engine, is launching as a free-to-play game later this year through Origin. Tim Morten, development director, says that while Command & Conquer will require an internet connection, it's not such a far-flung idea given the multiplayer nature of the game. The benefits of this are chiefly a more nimble game that can be updated far more frequently than any retail product.

With SimCity still fresh on everyone's mind, I asked Morten about the choice to take the online path. "First thing to know is this is not only a multiplayer game - we do offer skirmish so that people can practice up. I think with SimCity, a lot of people had an expectation to play solo. Many people are going to come to us to play multiplayer so we came from the mentality of how do we the make multiplayer experience as good as we can make it? The answer to that question is, we try to get rid of as much cheating as we can, and we try to get rid of as many problems with other peoples' lag impacting your own game."