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. "

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The Collapse Of Microsoft's First Party Support

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Collapse Of Microsoft's First Party Support

[JebusIsLord]

I dunno... having bought all these game companies in order to build up the 360's installed base, and having succeeded, doesn't it make sense now to sell them off and recoup their costs? They'll still make games for the 360... 3rd parties go to where the gamers are. The PS3 is barely a threat at this juncture, and Wii isn't raking it in for 3rd parties either.

MS way very agressive early on in aquiring these companies, and it has paid off. Sony would do well to follow their example.

EA ruins another developer.

[syn1kk]

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. "