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Pondering EA's Move Towards Hardcore
The site GigaOM is picking up its games coverage again, and kicks off with an article speculating on just what EA was thinking when it purchased BioWare and Pandemic. On the face of it, the move doesn't make much sense. BioWare is a great development house, but from EA's perspective their games are 'small potatoes'. "So why did they spend so much? The acquisition includes several titles for the Wii and DS already in development, and those may have breakout potential. There's tremendous gamer buzz around BioWare's upcoming RPG Mass Effect, but in all likelihood, it'll do similar numbers to the studio's million-plus-selling Knights of the Old Republic -- a hit, but not a huge one. There are rumors that BioWare is developing a 'Star Wars'-themed MMO, but if that's what inspired the purchase, the mystery only deepens: Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news."
Madden's Gate. 08.
Remember when they bought out Westwood and literally killed off the Command and Conquer and Lands of Lore series? They're probably thinking along the lines of "If we can't make decent games, no one should."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Even if there's no movie out I think a Star Wars theme will provide a much larger potential market than most other MMOS. I don't think the Galaxies failure will stop anyone that was completely due to Sony and had nothing to do with it being a Star Wars themed MMORPG.
Product Title:
Knights of the Old NCAA '09
Product Description:
Use the force as you progress through the NCAA college basketball championship and March madness! Use powers such as force speed to cross the court in less than a second, force jump to slam dunk with a white midget, force push to knock over other players without causing a foul, and more... just don't use force lightning on the ball, or you'll get a penalty for exploding the ball!
Riccitiello paid off some friends and himself with his acquisition. Bioware and Pandemic aren't worth $840 million, since their total accumulated revenue since inception has barely been higher. Riccitiello made gobs of cash, his buddies made gobs of cash, and Bioware and Pandemic will be gutted for the sake of efficiency. There's nothing else here. If anything, this will only be the milestone where EA will have started to go downhill. Goodbye Bioware. I hope the founders made enough money to start from scratch again.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Are they going to change their name to "Erotic Arts"?
Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news.
That's because it sucked. Royally.
It was buggy, laggy (the commercial database that kept track of everything couldn't handle the 8 gazzilion read and writes a second their poor design called for. shocking!), the classes were boring, the progression repetitive, the rewards non-existant. You were asked to play as Background_Character_01 in a world where you wanted to be Luke or Darth. At least fantasy MMO's let you kill the occasional rare spawn, or eventually dragons and the like.
A good game is a good game. And that's no different for an MMO. WoW was a good game, that's why it did well. Most MMO's these days are just pure crap. If a company released something good, and polished, it would do fine. SW theme or no SW theme. But crap is always going to be crap.