I wondered if EA were building up to something, with the re-release of privateer and WC1 and 2 on GOG, I wondered to myself if they were ramping interest in Wing Commander, or trying to gauge interest or something. Then with the confirmation of the WC Academy cartoons on DVD as well, just coincidence? or part of something bigger i thought?
As best I can tell, this is a pure, many-sided coincidence.
The GOG releases *are* (or were) actually part of an EA promotion... but not for Wing Commander. The plan was that they were supposed to coincide with the "Ultima Forver" social game launch. EA would get good press for finally making their back catalog available and in the process plug their new game. Unfortunately, things fell apart. Bioware delayed Ultima to February 2012 as part of their need to have all hands on deck for SWtOR... but the GOG deal was already signed (that's why EA launched the "ultimaforever.com" website the same day as the GOG announcement, seemingly for no apparent reason as all mention of the game it was to promote was removed.)
(History won't record this, but the Wing Commander aspect was actually on us. We pitched the idea of EA putting out a special version of Wing Commander I for the 20th anniversary. We even put together an /awesome/ proof of concept version, which remains far cooler than the GOG release. EA was really surprised by the reaction Paul Barnett's tweets about our idea got (it ended up in the print version of PC Gamer) and so it went into the GOG deal. Given the apparent greater interest in the GOG Wing Commander re-releases, someone may be questioning the idea to choose Ultima over the Privateer social game about now...)
Wing Commander Academy is surprisingly also a coincidence. I've been speaking with the producer of the set--who is a REALLY nice guy--and he was shocked about both the digital releases and the unannounced Chris Roberts project (and other things). His company licenses 'cult' TV shows that wouldn't be profitable for major studios to release and markets them to their particular fanbases. They chose Wing Commander Academy on the strength of the voice cast, not knowing there was an active Wing Commander community at all. So along the lines of--'ah, Star Wars and Back to the Future fans might be into this'. (They're also putting out a set of the 1975 Invisible Man series with Privateer 2's David McCallum, based on his current popularity on "NCIS.") The licensing process didn't involve EA at all, in fact--just NBC/Universal.
(Which is actually how we got involved. We recieved a generic Cease-and-Desist from NBC because of the copies of Academy on YouTube, which all mention our site in their description. I replied explaining that those actually weren't us, but we did have the DivX downloads. We'd been given permission from EA but would be happy to take them down if they were the right holders. And by the way was there some reason they were interested in Academy all of the sudden? And apparently I was so unexpectedly polite to this poor woman who's whole job is to yell at fans of NBC properties for streaming their videos illegally that she went above and beyond and put me in touch with the people who had licensed the DVD set from them... and that's how we got here!)
I think the Tom Wilson thing is PROBABLY a coincidence (probably the rumored Back to the Future-related project... Wing Commander is a big deal to us, but it's not exactly going to be TOP SECRET once it's in full production)... but the Unreal 3 bit is a good catch. If you don't mind I'll do a followup post talking about your leads, though!
