The first game isn't even out yet and already EA isn't shy about discussing the future of the Army of Two franchise.

At EA's mammoth HQ earlier this week, Lead Designer Chris Ferriera told us that he wants to get the development of Army of Two just right, so that the chance of pumping out sequels in the future is a possibility.

"To think of this game as a new IP within EA, it has to be right," he said. "We want the first game to be perfect, because if we launch an IP and it isn't what we want to make and isn't made to the right quality level, then the future for the franchise doesn't exist. We want to really build something strong."

EA Montreal has already put a good few years into the co-op shooter, and it's now sporting an intriguing "aggro meter" inspired by MMOs like World of Warcraft. We got to have a quick bash over Xbox Live and it's indeed shaping up nicely, even if we were more impressed at E3 last year.

It sounds like EA's outright banking on spawning sequels from the franchise. When questioned, the lead designer told us: "This is EA right? So when we have a hit we'll make more."

Of course everything depends on the amount of dough the first game rakes in, which considering its being released in November - right in the middle of the Halo 3/GTA IV/Mass Effect onslaught - could be a problem.

Either way, EA has its ideas: "Right now people tend to like it, so if we can make a sequel we can find out what people didn't like about the first and put in the stuff we didn't have time to - like originally we had 60 different co-op moves and only a tenth of those are going to make it into the final product."

Look for our first hands-on impressions shortly.

July 26, 2007