EA buys Bioware and Pandemic Studios.
Massively lucrative
ELECTRONIC ARTS has bought VG Holding Corp, owner of developers BioWare and Pandemic Studios.
In a complicated deal EA pays investment firm Elevation Partners around $775 million for a controlling interest in the game makers.
In a conference call, EA CFO Warren Jensen said total cost to the publisher was $860 million.
He said the studios addressed areas EA was keen on expanding into, in the massively multiplayer arena.
EA Games president Frank Gibeau said the studios would be encouraged to carry on with business as normal. "Inside of our label structure, they're going to be maintaining their autonomy and their cultural independence," he claimed. µ
Comments
Nooooo!
Bioware was great without EA, hand off!!!NOOOOOOOO!
NOOOOOOOO! Say it ain't so! Now Bioware and Pandemic are gonna suck too. Just like everything else EA touches.Another one bites the dust!
Oh well, another game developer gets eaten up by EA.I try and stay clear of anything under the EA brand nowadays, their games tend to have lost most peoples interest by the time they get around to fixing the bugs they contain.
Or they don't bother fixing it and instead just release another sequel in the franchise with a different set of bugs.
Anybody for:
- Need for Speed Overground Street Dub GTI Boy Racer Edition 3
- Fifa 2009 Ryman Premiere Ladies Pre-season
- Command and Conquer "The battle for yet more tiberian!" Deluxe Edition
- Medal of Honour - <insert conflict here> Assault
- The Sims 2 - Belly Fluff addon
Wait did anoyone see that dead horse twitch? Better flog them all just in case!
EA's At It Again Huh
They'll be no companies left if EA has there own way it's stupid.Maintaining what ?
"they're going to be maintaining their autonomy and their cultural independence"Oh sure they are. They'll be able to use whatever brush they want, as long as they paint in black.
EA and cultural independence ? Now THAT's an oxymoron !
Well..
I lost all respect for Bioware once they started buying into M$'s bribing of developers to develop games exclusively for the XBOX.:((
R.I.P Bioware. R.I.P Baldur's Gate. Die in a fire EA.The Inquirer?
After reading that 'open letter', I think you should rename to 'The Heckler' - I have no doubt you needed to fill up column space - job done then..EA is the devil
EA is the MS of the game world. It buys and kills off anything that can compete with an existing product. Or of the company is lucky thier product gets to live on in a buggy existance.Oh no!
There goes Knights Of The Old Republic 3 down the drain...No this is a nightmare
Bioware was one of my favourite companiesTheir RPG games are some of the Greatest in history
Now under EA this company dies and the future of the RPG games looks bleak
These news are shocking to me
I want to put burn EA
OH NO
ea = cheap games, facist employer.DIE ASAP
Yay go EA!
I love the EA franchise, all of their games are superb, I think they should buy more companies :) Battlefield 2 and the Tiger Woods series were great, wtf are you people on about? Sims sux imo though but it's very popular and successful so you can't argue with that!EA
having had previous titles from EA with countless updates and bugs.i wont touch another EA product again.it was the beginning of the end when they took over DICE.EA ..destroyer of creativity and of originality..the nothingness is coming!!
yeah, right
Ask Origin or Westwood how much autonomy or corporate culture they have left now...EA Empire
It's good for business and it'll keep folks happy up in Edmonton with EA's new employment policy but it's true EA will eventually phase out the name Bioware and Pandemic like they did with Westwood. Sad.Bad or Good
this is bad for all who were looking foward to kotor3 or is it?perhaps with ea money and platform porting "sluttines" kotor3 and mass effect might get the justice they deserve and be released on all platforms may be even mac:)
Great football and now this
Man EA just like to kill the compitition when it comes to creativity. Football is proof of that. I loved ESPN football on the xbox. And it was only 20 bucks with better graffics than Madden. Now all we have is madden. I guess there will be som new developers making non franchise games for the future. Hopefuly the independent companies will create next gen titles that are new and fresh to the gaming world. Thanks EA for killing games once again.