Electronic Arts has finally made good on one of its promises as it announced that four EA titles are now available for Mac users to play and enjoy. EA's offering includes the following four titles:

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Need for Speed: Carbon
• Battlefield 2142
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

The four titles listed above are the first games ever published by the company for Mac OS X. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 and Madden NFL 08 are also being readied for release sometime in the next two months.

Here's hoping that this trend continues and that more and more developers and publishers give Mac gamers some much-needed love. All of these games are now available for purchase at the Apple Store.

 

And how goes the gamers from the UK for the week past July 17? Chart Track's been busy as a bee, and it appears all you Harry Potter fans were, too. Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, DS, mobiles) from Electronic Arts is still "leviosa-ing" at the top of the charts with Activision's Transformers: The Game rolling out at second.

And those who haven't got their minds locked on either movie-based games are still bench-pressing those neurons with More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima from Nintendo, with fellow Nintendo brain-twister Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree close in tow. Fifth spot is Wii Play's playground, with the Nintendo title still frolicking in the top ten, Wiimote in hand. Activision's Shrek The Third lumbers over to number six, while Take-Two's The Darkness lurks on number seven.

Nintendo's Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training brainstorms to eight spot, while simmering in at number nine is 505 Games' Cooking Mama. And re-entering the charts is Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 with a straight cut into the all-platforms' upper ten, giving the golfing title a shot for the birdie.

1. Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (Electronic Arts)
2. Transformers: The Game (Activision)
3. More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima (Nintendo)
4. Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Nintendo)
5. Wii Play (Nintendo)
6. Shrek The Third (Activision)
7. The Darkness (Take-Two Interactive)
8. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo)
9. Cooking Mama (505 Games)
10. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 (Electronic Arts)

 

Looking back to Chart Track's statistics for the first week of July, Electronic Arts' Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, DS, Wii, PC, mobile) stays on top of the all-platforms charts for the second week in a row, while UK gamers flex their nerve cells with Nintendo's More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima which sticks to a solid second.

Activision's Shrek The Third still keeps to the third spot the week ending July 7, though Take-Two's The Darkness dips two spaces to fourth. Keeping close to another fellow horror game, Capcom's Resident Evil 4 haunts at fifth place, while happily tailing behind with a Wiimote is Wii Play from Nintendo - still strong in the charts after re-entering the top ten.

Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas still relies on lucky number seven to stay up the charts, with Microsoft's Forza Motorsport 2 slowly revving down from sixth to eighth. Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End slips to ninth place from eighth (giving new meaning to nine pieces of eight, we reckon), while Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training from Nintendo re-enters the charts and continues to twist noggins at closing number 10.

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: (Electronic Arts)
2. More Brain Training From Dr. Kawashima (Nintendo)
3. Shrek the Third (Activision)
4. The Darkness (Starbeeze)
5. Resident Evil 4 (Capcom)
6. Wii Play (Nintendo)
7. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (Ubisoft Montreal)
8. Forza Motorsport 2 (Microsoft)
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Eurocom Entertainment)
10. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo)

 

It's already been a week since our last Chart Track update and given the short lapse, a lot has changed. New to the list ending June 30 is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, whose multi-platform launch last week sees it performing a "Wingardium Leviosa" to UK's number one post.

Following closely along is The Darkness (PS3, Xbox 360), whose similarly timed launch schedule puts it at second place. Shrek the Third takes third, while Forza Motorsport 2 has moved down to sixth. Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training (DS) has dropped to 12th, after being replaced by More Brain Training From Dr. Kawashima at fifth place, while Spider-Man 3 has gone down to the 11th spot.

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: (EA UK)
2. The Darkness (Starbeeze)
3. Shrek the Third (Vicarious Visions)
4. Resident Evil 4 (Capcom)
5. More Brain Training From Dr. Kawashima (Nintendo)
6. Forza Motorsport 2 (Microsoft)
7. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (Ubisoft Montreal)
8. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Eurocom Entertainment)
9. Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (7 Studios)
10. Wii Play (Nintendo)

 

We're sure some of you are staunch Harry Potter fans who'd love the prospect of playing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix before everyone else? Or at least until they catch wind of this bit of news?

You're in luck, as tag team IGN and News of the World (a British newspaper) will bring the Order of the Phoenix demo straight to you. The said demo is already available at FilePlanet, weighing in at 400.5 MB. Players will be able to explore Hogwarts and play as Sirius Black, Professor Dumbledore, and of course, Harry Potter. The demo will also feature the new magic system so players can throw their practiced spells around.

Anyway, Electronic Arts' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be floating to the shelves very soon... (looks at calendar) er, supposedly today so keep your eyes peeled for that as well.

Open the doors to Hogwarts once again; you'd surely want to revisit the place before you watch the fifth Harry Potter movie and read the last book, right? Regardless, Electronic Arts' Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix is here to give you an interactive refresher course in the form of a video game. Especially since it's available across all major console and handheld platforms, there isn't any reason for you to miss out.

In line with the game, EA has launched a new website for the fans. Stroll around the campus to view screenshots and videos. You've probably even seen some of those media content before here on QJ. There's also a section where you can read up on the specific features of each platform version of the game (PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP, NDS, GBA, and PC).

What caught our attention though were the two coming soon sections of the site: "Mini-games" and "Wizarding Widgets." Wonder when those things will unlock themselves. Too bad Alohomora spells don't come cheap these days.

You can click the Read link below to head over to the site.

Here's a rare treat for those of us keeping tabs on the highly-anticipated multiplatform title, Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix - two videos that go deep behind the scenes of what goes around in the voice-acting part of the whole game development process. Harry Potter fans will definitely love these two tidbits, as you see the actual stars of the movie recording sound bites for their characters in the game.

The first video shows most of the celebrities gamely hacking away at their scripts, and it's an understatement that they sound pretty convincing, even when their entire audience is a microphone. The second gives viewers (and listeners) a peek at what they're doing to make sure Hogwarts itself is as lively and mysterious as it is in the book and film through the use of ambience noise and voices.

Must-watch videos, both of them. Enjoy!

The other video after the jump!

Soon, Apple fans waiting for months on end to see big PC games get ported to their platform will be a thing of the past. Electronic Arts, the world's biggest game publisher is cooperating hand in hand with Apple to make porting that much faster.

EA COO Bing Gordon was with Apple CEO Steve Jobs as the two announced this exciting development at the Worldwide Developer's Conference hosted by Apple in San Francisco.  Big EA game franchises Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be the first to ship on the Mac OS X platform followed by Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08.

To make the porting process easier, an engine called Cider developed by TransGames will be put into use. This will cut the development time significantly and keep Apple units in stride with their Windows counterparts.

TransGaming CEO Vikas Gupta says "traditionally Mac users had to wait to play the latest blockbuster games. "We're thrilled that TransGaming's Cider engine will dramatically decrease the time it will take to bring EA's hit portfolio of games to a thirsty Mac market."

You've seen how the sound effects of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were created. Now we've got another developer diary, this time focusing on the video game's setting, Hogwarts.

In the video, we discover that the video game's Hogwarts is heavily based on the movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They also based their Hogwarts from the previous books and the movies. We see video game magic at work as the developers showed some parts of the huge castle and the areas in the game.

Anyway, don't let us spoil it all for you. Electronic Art's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (DS, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and PC) is slated for release on June 25. In the meantime, check out the video.

A lot of times, audio is overlooked when people judge games. It often takes a back seat to graphics and gameplay when sites and magazines review a particular title, and we're not one to argue with the system. However, we will stress the value of sounds in a game and its ability to enchant us by setting the mood and giving us a more palpable feel of being inside the game itself.

Fortunately, EA's developers who are working on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix set for a major multi-platform release are not overlooking that. In fact, they've given special attention to the sound environment of the game to give players the best experience possible.

In this video, you'll see the process of SFX generation in a nutshell as well as other cool insights on how the game's aural presentation came together. Everything from idea conception to consistency with the film and book were talked about and that should help us all appreciate the effort that goes into sound engineering for video games. Enjoy!