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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.
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.
And of course there'll be no more text feedback to read in battles, it'll all be provided by commentary from Andy Gray and Martin Tyler (Americans can insert whoever commentates on whatever games EA whores over there).
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
John Madden.
Or, how I would envision it...
Madden: You see, Minsc just helped his party out by not being hit and by hitting his enemy. If he can continue doing that, then his party will win the fight.
Did you play KOTOR? And KOTOR 2? And you can say with a straight face that Obsidian is "the Honda to their GM"?? Jeezus, KOTOR was a terribly fun game, and ran pretty well on the Xbox. KOTOR 2 ran horribly, had major, game ending bugs, apparently used five year olds as the level designers, and left more plot lines dangling than a daytime soap, and made the Sopranos look like a well-thought out, complete ending. To top it all off, they left all the voice acting to a fantastic, unimplemented ending in the final product, rubbing it in for us. Bioware's not the best ever, but if Bioware is GM, I'd suggest Obsidian is Zastava (maker of the famous Yugo).
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
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!
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Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
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. "