GameCrave: EA Quadruple Feature

If you’re a Wii owner and haven’t already succumbed to your plastic instrument urges with Guitar Hero World Tour, the rival music game Rock Band 2 shipped out last week. Same goes for the Playstation 2 version of the game, though it isn’t clear when these titles will actually reach stores. As a Christmas gift, you’ll be tempting the fates.

Electronic Arts, the distributor of Rock Band 2, dominated the news last week. Because of the company’s propensity for hefty copy protection measures, it’s only possible to install the evolution simulator Spore on five computers, but a new de-authorization tool allows you to uninstall a copy on one computer and re-install elsewhere without lowering your total activation count. Then, EA offered an altogether SecurROM-free version by adding Spore and other top titles to Steam, a third-party download service. But it wasn’t all good news for the publisher. To cut costs, EA said 1,000 employees will be laid off and at least nine studios will close. Estimated annual savings? $120 million.