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EA Trying to Buy Ubisoft Shares
jujubees writes "What is going on with Electronic Arts these days? This morning it was revealed that EA is trying to acquire 19.9% of the Ubisoft shares owned by Dutch investment company Talpa Beheer B.V. If approved by the US Antitrust department, the buyout would instantly make EA the biggest shareholder, ahead of the Guillemot brothers. Whether this is a hostile takeover attempt is not clear at this point, no financial terms were disclosed." An anonymous reader also wrote in to mention a GamePro Editorial about the company, regarding its past as an honorable games-maker and its current reputation.
So if EA succeeds and they are the single ubiquitous supplier and their products are a POS, it sounds to me like that's a potential for the OSS gaming market to seize the day. It's IE being attacked by FF all over again.
True, there are indie games, but they rarely have the resources (human and financial) that EA does now. There are some great indie games, but they still face the challenge of marketing/publishing their game to turn a profit.
My beef with EA (and Vivendi) is they're buying up companies that did make innovative games. Then they either dismantle the companies or take all the credit when good games do come out.
I'm fresh out of college and looking for a job in gaming, but it's hard to find companies that inspire me like Interplay and Sierra did while I was growing up. They've been bought and destroyed or assimilated by EA and Vivendi.
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.
You ought to use the euro symbol instead...
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Its for precisecly this reason that Gordon Freeman represents the true Free Man. Valve's present business model could rock the foundation of the gamining industry. A small dedicated group of programmers and artists will turn out a quality product, and thanks to the internet, be able to recoup 100% of the sales revenue. The giant conglomerates will continute to turn out half-hearted sequels to their library of properties. Its only a matter of time till EA becomes obsolete.
As I said, I wrote something smiliar, and I agreed with what you said. Then something came to me... what about Mods? Counterstrike anyone? While not truly an open source product, (especially now) it started with a couple guys working on a project, and now is the most widley played game on the internet. Mods are far more like open source than the original game. The turnover rate for computers games may be high, but that's due to the fact that the game ends, and the replayability is often low. If a product where open source and continually updating, changing and adding new content, the game industry could be further improved. No more paying $50 for an expansion pack. You can't tell me the will isn't there, like I said, look at mods. I can't see why closed source games are better than open source.
It's a little soon to boycott Ubi. Buying from them now may help the share-holders other than EA stave off demands to change the board and the direction.
Of course EA wants to buy out or squeeze out the competition. The most pertinent remaining question for us as individuals is what'll we do to help out the folks whose lives will be disrupted as a result of the carnage. "When they came for the... because I was not a..." but in another form.
Human compassion is the only defence against the bestial appetite of the large corporation for devouring all surrounding worlds. Are you up for it?
Other than that, I hope Cyan (the Millers et al.) have an "out" in their contract and can find another distributor. I can't imagine what'll do more to destroy Myst than the "Myst-2006" approach to new titles.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Well it looks like the more idiots buy these horrible excuses for games being pumped out by EA the bigger and nastier they get.
Look, there is NO NEED for big distribution/development companies like EA any more. With the internet and the relatively inexpensive technologies available any programmer/level designer with marginal abilities should be able to turn out games at least as playable as most of the cookie-cutter garbage hitting the streets.
Gaming and game development need an open source alternative and strategy or else we'll just be fighting another M$ only this one pimps games.
Being the dude who wrote the editorial, I'd like to point out something: The fact that games aren't original directly ties in to how EA treats its employees. But first, tech companies burning out their employees isn't new at all--big companies like Intel and Motorola routinely do it by hiring college grads and waving high salaries. So EA getting the wrap for being the most evil company in the world isn't exactly accurate. The only reason why you don't see such blogs getting recognition is because it's (sadly) in other tech fields and accepted as something that comes along with the job. It's a newer phenomena for video games. I think you're missing a point that was inferred from the article either--games *are* getting crappy *because* they are burning out the employees. How do you think a game such as Golden Eye: Rogue Agent has a 9-month dev time? Most games start out with high ambitions of being the next greatest thing. Penny-pinching EA puts a strangle hold on innovation because of the bottom line--enforcing insanely short development times and irresponsible work hours. Hence the mediocrity of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Pacific Assault. Or even Battle for Middle-Earth, which was a great game but didn't fully live up to its expectations. Originally the game was supposed to have morale, with human foot soldiers backing away as Trolls approached on their positions. That's the exact reason why the original Medal of Honor people left and created Call of Duty (though they haven't publically acknowledged it) Most, if not all EA games have really short dev times--when's the last time you heard a game that they spend 2-3 years developing on?
I'm seeing a lot of Bashing going on for both EA and Ubisoft. What gives? Both produce/distribute great games. (Do they really make thier own games?) Currently on my hard drive I have by EA: Battlefield 1942 and MAdden 2004. On My harddrive from Ubisoft is IL2 forgotten battles and (or whatever the expansion is called). I am hoping some good will come out of this: I cannot stand the patching system for IL2 and the ability to play online... Anyone who has tried to play online with IL@ knows this. Madden and BF1942 online are easy. Maybe if nothing else there can still be great games with a more streamlined method of finding online opponents and patches.
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Even Freeciv, that is one of the usual examples of "bigger" FOSS games, is sorely lacking in the art department. There's barely any people with artistic skills contributing to FOSS games. If there was, though, it would be a different story, but the situation does not seem likely to change any time soon.
How does EA's competitive business practice make their games worse?
l 2005/ l deneyerogueagent/ z / e /fifasoccer2005/
Mainly because their main business model is cashing in on sequels to hit titles. Take a look at the reviews of the original hit titles (review in the 90's), then look at the sequels and their average reviews (80's, then 70's, then 60's...) For examples, see:
NHL 2005 - http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox/nh
Goldeneye 2 - http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox/go
Urbz (aka The Sims 2.5) - http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/urb
Fifa 2005 - http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/gamecub
And so on. Madden review scores are all over the roadmap, but now that they have the exclusive NFL license, do you seriously expect the quality to go up? Granted, there are some exceptions and there are excellent sequels, such as SSX3, but they are generally in the minority. An average rating in the 70's still isn't too shabby, but it's not fantastic either.
If there's one thing you can count on from EA, it's sequels. Lots of them. Which brings up the next point... innovation.
Unless a sequel radically changes the gameplay mechanics (and they usually don't), it cannot be considered innovative to cash in on an existing brand name. Not that there's anything wrong with that since they do have to please their shareholders. However, sequels dilute brand names and make them worthless over time (how excited can you get about another Sims game now?)
As for original hit titles, there are very very few original hit titles that EA actually created themselves (only SSX springs to mind in recent history). They generally acquire companies who have already made the initial risk in putting out a proven hit title, then generate endless sequels, as long as it remains profitable. This is their business practice. They play it safe, don't innovate (much), and focus on making as much money as possible.
Meanwhile through all the acquisitions, we end up having fewer and fewer companies likely to put out original titles, which could've been hits or not. And now we'll never know.
That is why EA is generally reviled - we love creativity and innovation, and we hate to see potientials being lost (regardless of whether it actually makes money or not). Rez and Beyond Good and Evil are excellent titles that never got the attention they deserved and were money losers, yet there are some of us who loved these titles and want to see more. EA isn't a likely source of such titles.