EA to Acquire BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios

[Eusis]

Yahoo news story.

[TurnBasedDude]

Man, EA just gobbles up other companies whole. Poor bioware. I am not a big fan of their games, but it sucks they're stuck with EA.

[DPB]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo........

My favourite developer (Bioware) bought out by my least favourite publisher.

[Dave]

Wow, they picked up Pandemic, too?

Am I to assume that EA and LucasArts will soon be teaming up for all of the Star Wars games in the future, since the best two game series I can think of off the top of my head (KOTOR and Battlefront) were developed by those two studios?

[Esper_Crusader]

EA is becoming quite the juggernaut in games development isn't it?  What's next, UbiSoft?  Seriously, are they going to own all the big name western developers eventually?

[Lilim]

Oh.. I think something died inside.

It really depends on how they handle these two. Will they go the Origin way or the Maxis way? Either way, I'm worried about the integrity of Bioware's future RPGs (Mass Effect 2 & 3, Dragon Age, Jade Empire). Will those franchises get whored out to every console possible? Will we have another Wing Commander Arena on our hands?

EA, you are too brutal for me.

[Cauton]

This is part of the a disturbing trend that's been going on for a long while now, where publishers acquire development houses. Activision bought Bizarre, 2K Games swallowed Irrational,  Microsoft gobbled up (and subsequently released, admittedly) Bungie and EA... Well, EA has been doing this stuff forever. Origin, Maxis, Bullfrog and now BioWare/Pandemic are just a few of the studios they've bought. It looks like we're moving towards a few big publishers owning pretty much all major game studios, leaving us with a very depressing video game business indeed. The big publishers will be a lot more hesitant to approve new ideas than independent developers are, and there's also the possibility that games will be "dumbed down" to appeal to a greater audience.

All we can hope is that BioWare, Pandemic and all other studios that get bought up are allowed to retain some kind of freedom (like how Blizzard is part of Vivendi but still kind of allowed to do their own thing).

[kyuusei]

My friend works at the EA here, and yesterday she went 'HOLY SHIT WE JUST ACQUIRED BIOWARE'.

When I said some form of congrats she was all, well it's great for us but bad for everyone else.

Haha. At least she was honest.

[Dice]

One day, EA will own the rights to the very letters that make the company name. =P

Good for them on a business stand-point. =)

[Bloodstar6078]

The only EA game I own is Burnout for my PSP, which is awesome. Too bad their taste in music sucks.

As for Bioware I've only played Kotor and I really didn't care for it. It wasn't bad but I wasn't really that into it either. Jade Empire peaked my interest but I ditched my xbox before I could play it. I can't remember if it was supposed to play similar to Kotor or not but either way I remember thinking that neither were really my kind of games.

[Tooker]

I love the Burnout series.  I wasn't thrilled by the fact that EA bought them, but aside from the music (I totally agree, Blood), they haven't done too bad with it.

I also really liked KOTOR - 1 was better than 2, but they were both good.  Jade Empire had some elements in common (like the way dialogue worked and the whole two paths thing), but battling was pretty different.  It wasn't turn-based, for example.

I'm hoping they won't ruin Bioware's stuff, but it's definitely a good business move for EA, so I can see why they bought them.