Publisher Electronic Arts has said that BioWare's role-playing game Mass Effect 2 will be released in "early 2010," confirming the title for Xbox 360 and PC.
The first Mass Effect was released in late 2007 as an Xbox 360 exclusive and ported to the PC later the next year. Developer BioWare Corp. always intended the game to be the first part in a trilogy, and a spring 2010 release for the next title has been widely expected by fans for some time.
Following EA’s acquisition of BioWare in January 2008, the second game was widely assumed to be a multiplatform release.
Although the importing of saved data from the original Xbox 360 or PC games into the sequel could somewhat limit the appeal of a PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect 2, there are no known contractual reasons as to why the series would remain exclusive to the Xbox 360 on consoles.
BioWare recently announced it was forming a new studio group with EA Montreal to support its existing Mass Effect 2 development team in Edmonton, Canada. Few details of the new game have been released, with a recent teaser trailer revealing little new plot or gameplay information.
