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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?'"
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.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
In another news, RenderWare software, out of the blue and without a rational explanation, drops 20fps, crashes time after time and "inspires" a series of mediocre movie adaptations and sport games. The dev team at Criterion is still trying to figure it out.
Maxis is doing fine (the sims)
Blackbox is doing fine (NFS underground).
EA Tiburon (Madden) is doing fine.
People say EA destroyed Origin, but Origin was long dead before being acquired.
People bitch about EA's sports games, but those sports games are actually good.
And and there are studios that didn't survive their acquisition (or rather, their best employees were relocated, and the rest was shutdown). And of course there are some games EA puts out that aren't as good as the rest.
But get real, EA puts out a lot of really good titles. And EA must have great tools and libs. On consoles, a good portion of their games look better then the majority of other titles.
Are you telling me FIFA doesn't look awesome? Are you telling me SSX 3 doesn't look gorgeous? (and runs at 60 fps on a ps2 for most areas)
I've noticed that people always hate #1. No matter the industry, the sport, etc. People hate EA, people hate Michael Schumacher, etc, etc.
Many companies make a middleware bet, wrap their toolchain and game franchise around it. The mediocre ones ship one game (if they're lucky) and then die. The successful ones develop an engine, toolchain, and gameplay that they'd like to reuse for the sequels. In the past, they paid more money to RW and they were set. Now, the price is negotiable with the gorilla of the industry.
Strategically, it means every studio has to get off of Renderware ASAP or they could be crushed if EA ever looks in their direction.
Since Renderware is basically console-only, its only real competitors are/were NDL and Alchemy. Neither are as big, but both may be perceived to be needed to fight against EA.
(I'd post a disclaimer here, but its no longer relevant)