So it seems EA has just laid out cash once again to cover it's failings. If this is anything like westwood or other purchases, you can kiss quality goodbye. Electronic Arts has announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp., the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. "These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I'm glad to be working with them again," said EA CEO John Riccitiello. I can hear the employees packing as we read this... any bets on the days until a new studio is formed? "They'll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties. We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders." Translation: Bioware games are now driven by timelines based on stocks, not quality. EA will pay up to USD 620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional USD 155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. Translation: Please don't quit right away! BioWare is currently developing Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Translation: To be the last Bioware title of any quality of any kind. Expect MMORPG to be cancelled or turned into an FPS Pandemic Studios is developing the upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Saboteur. Just what we need, another FPS from EA. The two developers employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; and Brisbane, Australia. Who will all be forcibly moved to california and made to work 70 hours a week.
man, I used to like EA back in the mega-drive days. Now they just seem to whore franchises out. I fondly remember the first NFS and the few others after it being good, and then i lost interest. Fifa, the same - Sim City? Maxis did a better job on their own. EA make games for the sake of making money, their products lack personality and style. I call this the "broad brush" approach.
Good bye Bioware, hope you enjoy having your once decent development team gutted and stripped down to a fraction of your former glory by a company that has its head up its fucking ass. I predict several leaving due to this purchase. Its sort of amazing how much money these bastards have to waste: Hope their investment crashes and burns (It won't....sadly) Granted, I am glad they didn't get KOTOR as part of the deal, since Lucasarts pretty much owns it. That means there is still hope for a KOTOR 3.
That sucks, but I don't think I even own any Bioware games, and while Mass Effect looks cool, I have a feeling I personally won't like it, but it's always bad to see this happen. I wonder what'll happen to the Sonic RPG.
Oh man, that's right, they are handling the Sonic RPG... Wonder if that's gonna be canned. This really does suck though. I don't expect good things to come of this buyout and like others I hope the developers bail and reform as a new company. I just can't see EA treating them well. =/
Yeah, Lucasarts did a bang up job the last time making sure the developer had enough time to make a quality game instead of going for the quick buck.
which is exactly why they let in house developers go right? All MS has really done is overpay for Rare.
I used to like EA back in the days of Adventure Construction Set...though I didn't like looking at the logo change colors for 15 minutes while it loaded.
