BioWare - EA Acquisition Roundup

News of EA's BioWare/Pandemic acquisition is washing over the 'net with interviews and commentary starting to pop up. First, GamesIndustry's newsbit notes John Riccitiello will earn $4.9M from the deal, according to an SEC filing. Gamasutra has a summary of an EA conference call on the deal as well as an interview with Pandemic. FiringSquad has an Insider View, with insight apparently coming from unnamed BioWare staff after a meeting to explain the situation, as well as general commentary:

The downside, however, is that John has arguably bet his own personal political bank at EA on BioWare and Pandemic. Should they not deliver to expectations, their failure could be an excuse for traditional EA elements to remove Riccitiello and return to EA’s profitable-but-boring sequelitis ways. This, of course, will mean the doom of BioWare in the way that Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, and Maxis were wiped out. With any change comes friction, and there is little doubt that by cutting into the bloat in EA and by bypassing the traditional EA power structure with BioWare-Pandemic, John Riccitiello has created enemies in the company. Like, say, people who think that a slow, unwieldly, but attractive interface in the name of the Almighty Brand is a good idea.

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...and GameSpot's Tor Thorsen is first to actually chat to the Doctors, who are always up for some positive PR:

Greg Zeschuk: Well, to be blunt, I don't really see ourselves as not being independent anymore. We've got a goal of making great BioWare games, and we believe in [EA CEO] John[ Riccitiello]'s vision--we can't overemphasize that. We've worked with John for years, and we're looking forward to keep doing what we're doing and doing it well.

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We are Borg. Anyway, here's a bit on Dragon Age:

GS: Now, you just mentioned Dragon Age. Since Dragon Age wasn't mentioned in the acquisition announcement and so little has been heard about it, there's been some speculation that it was canceled.
RM: Oh, no. We were just playing that last week as well. It's one of the more enjoyable things I've done in the past few weeks, by far. I could not stop playing it. I meant to play it just for a little bit just to check it out, but I ended up playing it all weekend. I wish we could say more about it, as the team has been putting in some late hours on the project, and they've come up with some amazing stuff. We're gonna be revealing some more about Dragon Age very soon, I think, and I think you'll be excited to hear about it.

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More information.

Typical for EA: Rather buy other companies and milk them ("Cash-Cow") than developing something on their own.

EA is in my eyes nothing more than a big, huge parasite.

They buy other companies like Phenomic, Westwood, Origin, milk them out, then throw them away or "assimilate" them.

EA is not able anymore to do something on their own, especially nothing innovative.

That's really bad news. While I haven't really been fond at all of their incredibly similar faux-turnbased real time action RPG engines, they DID turn out RPGs(mostly) AND, more importantly, DID SUPPORT their games for an almost unheard of length of time including not only bug fixes but new features and content. Along with the easy modability of NWN1, and hopeful modability of Dragon Age still makes some of their games worth looking at. (Even BG1 & 2 were moddable to an extent, although not very easily.)

I'm beginning to fear that DA will be turned into a purely console ARPG, as even Bioware was not above going the enitrely console route as they admitted they did with Jade Empire(even less of a loss than their other games though) as they, apparently, needed cash at the time. (Read it in an interview somewhere last spring or winter, but I don't remember where...)

Well, here's to hoping that they don't join the good ship S.S. Oritanic.

Ok, thats that then, its all over, remember Ultima (single player)

WESTWOOD studios , "In 1998, Westwood was acquired by Electronic Arts (EA). In response to what was perceived as an unwillingness to maintain the Westwood brand and independence from EA, many long-time employees quit over the next few years" AND BULLFORG .."Electronic Arts, Bullfrog's publisher, acquired the studio in January 1995. Molyneux had become an Electronic Arts vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA purchased a significant share of Bullfrog. Molyneux left Bullfrog in August 1997 to found Lionhead Studios whilst other members of the original team founded Mucky Foot Productions. The last titles to bear the Bullfrog logo were published in 2001. 2004 met the final end of Bullfrog when Electronic Arts combined their side studios into EA UK"shall i go on???

"This acquisition fills up a gap in our genre line-up," said Jenson. "We are currently underrepresented in key genres: RPG, action, and adventure."

EA now cares about RPGs! You can trust them boys and girls.

Terrible news. Most terrible. EA has destroyed so many great and creative studios already.

With all the cash paid I am sure SOME however are very happy. We are Borg? Yes, but apparently even among Borg some are richer and others have to pay the price.

I wonder what RG/LB thinks of this!!