The official press release announcing Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is online, offering some details on the RTS sequel, and saying that purchasing Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath will entitle players to get early access to the game's beta test. Here's a portion of the lengthy announcement:

In Red Alert 3, the desperate leadership of a doomed Soviet Union travels back in time to change history and restore the glory of Mother Russia. The time travel mission goes awry, creating an alternate timeline where technology has followed an entirely different evolution, a new superpower has been thrust on to the world stage, and World War III is raging. The Empire of the Rising Sun has risen in the East, making World War III a three-way struggle between the Soviets, the Allies, and the Empire with armies fielding wacky and wonderful weapons and technologies like Tesla coils, heavily armed War Blimps, teleportation, armored bears, intelligent dolphins, floating island fortresses, and transforming tanks.

Red Alert 3 asks the question “What If?” What if every bizarre research project and technology experiment for the last 70 years had actually borne fruit? What if the Philadelphia Experiment, time travel theory, teleportation, invisibility, Tesla technology, and a hundred other intriguing research projects had all paid off and gone mainstream? What if the Soviet Union survived and thrived; what would it look like 10 years in the future? What if the Japanese Empire had never fallen and instead became the ultimate high-tech military superpower? The end result is an imaginative and playful vision of an alternate future filled with possibility.

Command & Conquer fans eager to experience Red Alert 3 before anyone else can get early access to the beta (available for the PC only - an announcement about the Red Alert 3 beta dates will be made this summer) by picking up a copy of Command & Conquer™ 3: Kane’s Wrath later this year.