EA, always the master of doing something evil in the realm of videogames, has shown off a first movie of their upcoming Wing Commander: Arena game, and the results are, well, disappointing to fans of the franchise. Expecting a great space shooter along the lines of X-Wing and TIE Fighter? Well, forget it… from the looks of this movie, the new Wing Commander is going to be an arcade-y Asteroids clone that for some reason goes with a zoomed-out, 3rd-person (3rd-ship?) perspective. Oh, and no 3rd dimension for you. It looks like you’ll get to yaw and pitch your ship all you want, but the roll is decidedly missing in this 2.5-D shooter.

If the final game ends up looking like this, I expect Wing Commander will be quickly added to the list of franchises that were killed by their respective copyright holders. EA will be producing this game for Xbox Live Arcade, so it’s understandable that it looks like more of a casual gaming title. But frankly I’d be happier if they just put the original WC series up for download.