What particularly pleases me is how this could be seen as providing a "good guys" team to stand against EA's often-percieved "bad guys" team, which should be an interesting public dynamic to watch:P Activision are hardly the good guys. It's really a case of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Activision hasn't published a single non-licensed game or a game that isn't a sequel this year.
The "EA Spouse" thing is also pretty outdated. Conditions have changed a lot since then, and now by most accounts EA is probably the best videogame company to work for. In addition to that, EA has published a couple of really good original titles this year (Crysis and Rock Band). They also published The Orange Box for Valve which gets them some cool points.
I'm not saying they've turned over a new leaf or anything, but they're definitely not exclusively publishing licensed shovelware and yearly sequels like they were a few years ago, and they certainly aren't an exceptional publisher when it comes to publishing lots of mediocre games.
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The "EA Spouse" thing is also pretty outdated. Conditions have changed a lot since then, and now by most accounts EA is probably the best videogame company to work for. In addition to that, EA has published a couple of really good original titles this year (Crysis and Rock Band). They also published The Orange Box for Valve which gets them some cool points.
I'm not saying they've turned over a new leaf or anything, but they're definitely not exclusively publishing licensed shovelware and yearly sequels like they were a few years ago, and they certainly aren't an exceptional publisher when it comes to publishing lots of mediocre games.