Electronic Arts Buys Criterion, RenderWare

CFresquet writes "Gamesindustry.biz reports that Electronic Arts has purchased developer Criterion Software. Criterion is the game developer behind Burnout 3 and 'anticipated first person shooter Black', but also makes RenderWare, arguably the most popular 3rd party game engine solution used in PC, console, and hand-held game development. With this purchase, EA now suddenly has its fingers in the development of many of its competitor's games. Formerly independent studios now find themselves unexpectedly partnered with the gorilla of the industry, and EA could be in a position to leverage its ownership of this technology when negotiating with publishing agreements with studios." Intriguingly, this means that the engine technology powering Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City (and GTA: San Andreas?) is now EA-owned, though Criterion's David Lau-Kee claims "a win for everybody", arguing the takeover gives RenderWare "the capability to step up today and say to the entire industry, you know, 'We'll help you out?'"

Comments

Will there be "secret" features inthe game engine?

[OneDeeTenTee]

It certainly must be tempting to either add features that only EA games will be able to make use of, or to slow down development of the version they liscense to others while adding features for their own games.

Will EA destroy all?

[chrispyman]

While it's quite true that many of the games made by companies gobbled up by EA have become nothing but crap, that is irrelevent as RenderWare is not a game. At best, RenderWare will continue developing its software for license to other parties and will probably be used more and more in EA's projects. At worse, they'll turn it into EA-internal-only product and I'll suck. In either case, who cares? Developers can use anything they want to make their games, and those already in the process aren't going to suddenly find that the software stops working. All that matters to the consumer is having a good game.

Sounds like good news for middleware renderers

[AltaMannen]

Good news for LithTech, GameBryo, Unreal Engine, Source Engine, id Software licensing and so on. All the other options available to middleware-using developers now that they have a good reason to make a switch.