White Knight Chronicles "awakening soon"
Dead Space arriving in Europe earlier than expected
LittleBigPlanet US boxart revealedEA Empire grows ever larger, with the assimilation of BioWare and Pandemic into their collective.
In a press release sent to PSU Towers, EA gave detailed reasons for the buy out of VG Holding Corp., the company that owns both BioWare and Pandemic. In it, they praised both companies for being 'market leaders' in their fields of RPG and Action/Adventure games respectively, and said how “this acquisition gives EA a strong competitive position in key genres in interactive entertainment”. As if EA really needs more of a monopoly.
But EA weren't wrong; BioWare and Pandemic make superb video games. BioWare are famous for the original Star Wars: Knight if the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, two highly acclaimed games that helped cement their position as awesome RPG makers. They're currently putting the finishing touches to Mass Effect, their highly anticipated 360 RPG.
Pandemic are nothing to be snorted at either. With games like Full Specturm Warrior, Mercenaries and the Star Wars: Battlefront series under their belts, they seem to know what they're doing.
In the press release, John Riccitiello, CEO of EA, had this to say: (Caution: Excessive use of buzzwords) "These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I'm glad to be working with them again. 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."
In an interview with GameSpot, legendary BioWare owners Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeshcuk gave their views on how the purchase affects them, which you can read here. There are key points in the interview to note. Mainly, BioWare do not plan for EA to come in and change the way they do things, and the guys are very excited about the extra resources, which are now accessible, be it for marketing or developing.
It seems the guys at BioWare have been in talks with EA for some time, and have really good opinions of the Big Wigs over in the Redmond EA Fortress. Apparently, Mr Riccitiello is very excited about an MMO BioWare have in the works, and in a conference call over it he could barely contain his excitement. No details of said MMO have been revealed...at all, and both men did not give anything away, other than to say 'it's fun'.
Unfortunately however, it seems that Mass Effect for now is still being published by Bill Gates' Crew, and is likely that the trilogy of ME games will likely stay on the Xbox 360...at least for now anyway.
On the other side of the fence, president Josh Resnick, CEO Andrew Goldman, and chief production officer Greg Borrud of Pandemic had a chat with Gamasutra.
Again, the guys at Pandemic were very excited with the deal. When asked about how they felt when the deal was first brought to their attention, Mr Resnick said, “we were actually driving it through”. Also, they feel that being part of EA will not change the way they do things, being proud of their previous independence, and will only call upon the EA resources when needed.
This is quite a good move for EA, getting in two top class developers to develop for two of gamings most entertaining genres. Obviously there will be doubters who think they have sold out, and will never be able to work the same again, one only has to look at the controversy surrounding the two recent Command and Conquer instalments.
So the bottom line seems to be, if EA lets them do as they wish, and make the games they like to make and do it the way they've been doing it for the past few years, things will only get better for the two studios. If, on the other hand, EA start dictating time frames and business models, will this be the end of two of gamings best-loved developers?
Unfortunately, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Only when each studio has released a few EA guided games will the outcome be known.
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PSU Towers? Want to make sarcastic comment, but will keep mouth shut!
It's something I built from some toilet roll tubes and sticky back plastic
Toilet paper tubes? That's Impressive!
We will have to see of how EA oversee's these two studios.
Dang, resistance seems futile. I wonder when anti-trust laws may kick in?
Well, i hope mass effect 2 comes to ps3. or something like that. Also i cant believe i acually commented before that GINGO guy.
(Caution: Excessive use of buzzwords) ummmm.... what buzzwords?
This is Terrific news, Simply superb great news, Fantasticly, Awsomely Wonderfull News.............For an Xbox 360 fan site.
Surely EA (who loves Microsoft) & Ubisoft (Who loves Nintendo & Microsoft) can't be allowed to own ALL of the industry. Can't we have SOME independent developers / publishers left who can make their own decision as to which platforms they will support? Although these two studio's are mostly PC centric I still hope this gets knocked on the head. We need more competition - not less.
That gingo dude really creeps me out.
Anyway, how does this relate to Sony? Possibility of Mass Effect on PS3? Come on.
What is Buzzword/s?
as promising as this sounds, i don't like it. EA is in bed with MS and with EA owning these two studios, i don't see much benefit for PS3.
ok....several things....buzzswords...lightsabers...hence the Knights of the old republic and star wars battlefront. Other then that i'm one of the people worried about how it will effect they're work i hope it will be the same or better!
@ The Cleanser, if ubisoft is so in love with nintendo and M$ then why are they making Haze an exclusive to PS3? Maybe you'd do a little thinking before you say your crap.
psn id: gingo.... maybe now EA will get a finished game added to their collection. ko ko but seriously this could be great in better games are produced
Lithgow, learn your place. Haze is ONE game in a sea of crap coming to the PS3. Lucky for you Moore ended the damn 30fps for the PS3. Read up on Haze before you criticize others. They didn't have the resources to produce 3 versions of Haze at once.
Hopefully this merger will bring some respect to the EA camp.
ea sux so bad ...
E.A. stands for Eats @zz lol
@ "Lithgow" - (as in near the Blue Mountains?)
Mate - If you look at the Ubisoft annual meeting and the shareholder minutes you'll see great meantion of "Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii" as the big profit drivers blah blah blah. They meantion Xbox 360 three times more than they do PS3. They clearly state their desire to make the most of their properties by offering across all platforms. The exception is Wii where Ubisoft says it making "significant investments to take exclusive advantage of the Wii"... They also meantion Assassins creed but the only figures offered as guidance are on Microsofts XBox 360...
Then look at the share register on the last few pages.... see the largest share holding in Ubisoft of 24.9% is held by a company called..... Electronic Arts of Redwood City CA, USA... With Ubisoft shares trading at the time at $45.70 EA are currently holding around US$1 Billion worth of Ubisoft shares. So after splashing out with a $800 million offer for BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios EA are still left with...US$3 Billion in cash... so if 25% = $1Billion then $3 Billion could buy another 75%. Go check it out - Im not making this up.
Now look at the second largest holding - it is owned by the Guillemot family who if you sniff around have just invested in another private studio based in China...and who are those other investors - might they be current Microsoft people? - Hey isnt John Schappert the guy in charge of Microsofts "Xbox Live" business unit - and hang on wasnt he previously employed at EA? ... Now go look at UbiSoft's own studio in China based in Shanghai - so who did the Guillemots put in charge? ...none other than Richard Tsao - hey isnt he an ex Microsoft Gaming Division Executive?
And naturally the former EA President Don Mattrick taking over Peter Moores old job at Microsoft, Whilst Peter moves to EA - its all just an amazing coincidence - right?
By law it would have to be a coincidence because if Microsoft directly owned EA & UbiSoft that would give them to much share - it would never pass the US monopolies board or get clearance by the EU (UbiSoft is a French company). As it stands EA & Ubisoft are all just freinds and this would allow Microsoft to go and buy a Japanese publisher - like Namco, Konami, or Square.
So anyway what where you saying about UbiSoft?
@ "The Cleaner"
looks like we have an insider ...
It's a Conspiracy!!!!
About 30 years ago, there was this small company that created some of the greatest at the time franchises in the RPG genre. They kept pumping out one great game after the other and became a synonimous with quality and AAA games. After a decade or so of great success, EA bought them and they kept producing great games... for a while. After some bad games, the founders of the original company left and the company name was eventually forgotten. Sounds familiar? The name of the company was Origin Systems, makers of Ultima, Wing Commander and some other smaller but still great franchises. Richard "Lord British" Garriot and Chris Roberts were true innovators and their company was killed by EA. I really like Bioware and their games, I consider Baldur's Gate their greatest accomplishment and perhaps the greatest RPG games so far. I HOPE that what happened at Origin doesn't happen to Bioware. If EA changes their ways and let's say starts porting Bioware games to the PS3, I'll be pleaseantly surprised.
That is so true. Origin was an increadible company who opened new doors with their story telling but once merged into EA in 1992, things started to go bad. By 1994 the final chapters of Ultima (VIII Pagan and onwards) the adventure of gameplay and story where lost. By the release of Acentions it was clear to all that Origin was no more the wizards of the D&D RPG scene. Some of the die hard Privateer & Wing Commander fans tried to keep the spark alive in their own way and have released fan versions & mods in tribute to the original Origin.
Sounds like Peter Moore is behind the curtains thinking of new ways to disrupt any potential games they might make for Sony.