Slashdot Mirror
EA/BioWare Deal Finalized, Nets EA Ten Franchises
Gamasutra notes that the announced deal, where Electronic Arts was to purchase BioWare/Pandemic, has now been formalized. This arrangement will fold ten new franchises into the EA family, from the just-released Mass Effect all the way back to BioWare's classic titles. "EA Games president Frank Gibeau will oversee both studios within his organization, and BioWare's Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have each been named as vice presidents of EA and co-general managers of BioWare. Similarly, Pandemic's Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick have each been named vice presidents of EA and co-general managers of Pandemic, while Greg Borrud has been named vice president of EA and chief production officer of Pandemic Studios. "
Following this announcement, all BioWare and Pandemic developers were ordered to repor t to headquarters for a 10 digit tattoo on their arms and re-EAification. Prepare to learn how to saturate the market with your titles differing by only one digit!
... oh wait, nevermind, competition's been
purchased. Whew! That was close. Ok, everybody
resume average game ideas, and above all nothing
risky or extraordinary! Remember, your ideas
have to be approved through like seventy levels of
command so don't even start with any out of the
ordinary stuff we aren't sure will be an instant
mediocre game netting us an average profit.
Christ, for a moment there I thought EA's Battlefield, Medal of Honor & Crysis games were going to have to step it up a notch to compete with these new
WoW, I can't wait for Mass Effect 2 through 5 and Mass Effect 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013. Just imagine the rosters!
My work here is dung.
It was as if millions of gamers cried out and were silenced.
So exactly how much of the game industry is now owned by either Electronic Arts or Vivendi?
Bungie - Was so unhappy working with Microsoft they forced them to let the company become independent and work on any platform they want
Bizarre - Ended their exclusive Xbox development when they went off to Activision
Bioware - Ended their exclusive Xbox development when they went off to EA
That pretty much just leaves Lionhead and Rare as Microsoft's first party Xbox developers. Rare has been a disaster for the money Microsoft paid to acquire the developer. Lionhead has been 'meh'. A decent developer that talks too much about grand plans that continually disappoint in their actual product.
With these rumors of Microsoft looking to license the Xbox to third party manufacturers you have to wonder if Microsoft is ready to turn their focus away from console hardware and back to Windows gaming.
Come on EA, dip into that huge bank account you have and fully fund Baldur's Gate III!
Living With a Nerd
Bioware announced their next game, expected to be released in early 2010, Madden Effect 2k10.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Don't forget Mass Effect 5...... thousand
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
But Duke Nukem Forever is being reworked exclusively for X-Box!
This is my sig.
Most of their existence was spent being the new SSI. Their crown jewel series and claim to fame, Baldur's Gate, was neither risky nor extraordinary; it was a D&D game modeled after Diablo. Bioware's next, what, dozen games after that were all paint-by-number D&D games.
They never even managed to make the best games with the engines they produced. Black Isle (and later Obsidian) played the Honda to their GM every time they got the opportunity to.
You mean Baldur's Gate 2009 (to be released Autumn 2008). Or as it's known internally 'BG2 with facial expressions'. And I've heard rumours of plans for a followup, known only by it's secret codename 'BG2 with facial expressions and realistic grass effects'
Is that the one with the Mohawk class of Night Elves?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
All's I got to say is that Battlefield 2142 is the buggiest, glitchiest piece of coding garbage I have ever purchased on a PC. If they use the same programmers for the new franchises they just pruchased expect the quality to go from spectacular to suck in a single release. I would hope that buying these franchises would help some quality codingness to rub off, but somehow I doubt that.
That EA is allowed to buy out all their competition rather than be forced to produce top notch titles in an effort to battle over the market is a farce to me. They did it with Madden as well by scooping up the NFL license just as Visual Concepts' ESPN NFL 2k series was starting to show signs of seriously competing with Madden. They can't be allowed to continue doing this. Why would BioWare want this for themselves? Doesn't anyone inside gaming feel that EA needs less help than anyone? Stay independent! Fight the urge to conglomerate!
Click here
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
While I agree that the majority of EA games are fuming turds, don't touch Crysis. It's one of the best-looking and most fun games I have played in a long while.
Apparently Crytek has been getting real nice treatment from EA, it is good to see that they are giving the developer's they own some bit of freedom now. Hopefully this will continue with BioWare.
But... I don't know, considering how well Crysis sold, we'll have to wait and see what they allow BioWare.
Does this mean that all of Bioware's titles are going to play like XBOX games ported to the PC, like all of the C&C games now? I'm sure it does.
You people and your slight differences disgust me! - Prof. Farnsworth
I predict this aquisition will go just as well for them as it did when EA bought out Origin, Bullfrog and Westwood studios!
"We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place your keyboards on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to innovate. Assume the 'Party Escort Submission Position' or you will miss the party."
When someone says, "Any fool can see
This has spoilers, so don't read further if you're still playing the game. It's also opinion so feel free to disagree ;).
Crysis was pretty and the physics were awesome, but I'm not sure if I'd describe it as "fun". The only thing that stopped me from quitting was the fact that I paid for it. Oddly enough everyone despises the alien plot theme, however that was the *only* saving grace for me. Running around the jungle got old. From the helicopter pulled directly from Half-Life that could find you if you were crouched in a bush being completely still at night under a heavy canopy of trees to the human enemies taking *clips* of ammo into them without dying. And when you first explore the alien base in 0G it's one of the most aggravating levels I have ever played in my life and I was constantly confused as to where I was actually supposed to go. It only got interesting after that and even then you had annoying shit like escorting your friend to fires to warm up when sometimes the fires weren't there (nice bug) and flying your airship through a swirling vortex which killed me a number of times. Let's hope the sequel is better.
Yet another instance of a console gamer criticizing a PC-centric development house based on the fraction of their portfolio that they've been exposed to on their platform (a platform more commonly used for cash-grab titles than art, BTW).
And yes, I did play both KOTOR games. KOTOR2's bugs and failings were all due to a rush to publication and not poor game design. They were both mediocre games and there was not a monumental difference in quality between them, whatever your exaggerated claim.
"Gentlemen, you can't have a small worry in here! This is the Crysis room!"
One thing I've heard rumours of, is that they're actually illing to pay a little more to keep the talent that bioware brings to the table. rather than just buying the company out, letting the people go and replacing them with less-talented kids fresh out of school. We'll see how long that lasts, I hope the good Doctors got some good money for it. I'm looking at you Muzyka.
I wanted Crysis to be a good game. I really did. Problem is, Crytek got so obsessed with creating next generation technology, I think they might have forgotten the game somewhere in the tech. I downloaded the Demo, to see if the game would run ok on my computer, and to see if it was any fun.
I had waaayy too many technical and performance problems with the demo to even consider shelling out for the game. Granted, I don't have a high-end gaming desktop computer. Guess what. . . neither do most people. That's the problem with the PC gaming industry. They develop games for computers that most people don't have.
My Specs:
Dell Inspiron Laptop:
1920x1200 17" LCD
Intel 2.0 Ghz Mobile Core2 Duo
GeForce Go 7900 GS video
1Gig RAM
7200 RPM PATA 133MB/S hard drive (I think)
So, not the highest end computer in the world, but really, a pretty competent gaming machine, mostly. It is better than a lot of brand new, low-end desktop systems.
But Crysis ran *horribly* on it. During every firefight, it seemed like the fps dropped way down, to the point where it reminded me of when I first played DOOM on a 386sx - which was pretty much a slideshow. The difference is, when DOOM released, most people with computers really did have 486 or Pentium computers which could handle it. I doubt most PC owners have computers that could handle Crysis at this point.
Example 1 - Dungeon Keeper series by Bullfrog:
"Bullfrog had decided not to do any other RTS of any kind. This decision was in effect the end of Bullfrog as a brand; the company had already been owned by EA for several years, and EA laid off some employees and put the remainder onto other projects such as the Harry Potter line."
"2004 met the final end of Bullfrog when Electronic Arts combined their side studios into EA UK."
Lord British - talking about how EA is a ONE TRICK PONY:
"Richard Garriott: The short explanation was, as they say, fundamental creative differences. If you've seen any of the Ultimas, you know they contain very large virtual worlds, deep story lines and they took me each years to develop. But EA's core business is making sports games, and they've got a machine and a process that does that very, very successfully. Frankly, EA wasn't convinced that the MMOG business model was the way of the future and so that ultimately led to my retirement from EA. In fact, when I left in 2000, I fully anticipated that if EA wasn't interested in MMOGs, that Microsoft or some other big company would dive into this bold new world that we'd opened up and then dominate the market segment. After a year of retirement -- and with no one approaching us -- my brother Robert and I decided to put together a company to create MMOGs that we briefly called Destination Games. "
What about that game. WHAT? I'm a Sonic fan.
Why do so many vapid fanboy comments get modded up these days? Seriously, what did parent poster say that was insightful or interesting in the least? "KOTOR2 sux0red"?
Whilst the 360 is in second place to the Wii, it's still 1st place in terms of software sales by quite a decent margin. That means that no matter what the 1st party support it's still getting a hell of a lot of development attention because it's the console software developers can currently make the most money from.
Seeing as Nintendo and Sony have much greater 1st party software support yet lower software sales for their consoles (despite in the case of Nintendo having a higher userbase) I fail to understand how any perceived collapse of 1st party support is a problem anyway.
Not that Bizarre and Bioware were ever 1st party anyway, just that they simply chose to support only the 360 on certain games, which makes sense when for a large portion of the period they were developing those particular games the 360 was the only console with a sizeable amount of units out there anyway.
Or to put it another way, no you can't have Devil May Cry 4, GTA4, Assassins Creed, Virtua Fighter 5, Beautiful Katamari or Fatal Inertia back for your PS3!