Electronic Arts to acquire BioWare and Pandemic. I’m just a little disappointed. Both are good good studios. I much prefer EA to stop buying game studios. One day, perhaps there will be like 5 game companies in the world only – EA, Vivendi Universal, Nintendo, Microsoft and Square Enix. This came a week after Microsoft and Bungie split up which I thought was quite surprising actually.
EA To Acquire BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp. — the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. This acquisition gives EA a strong competitive position in key genres in interactive entertainment: action, adventure and role-playing games. The two studios have been recognized for creating some of the highest-quality games in the industry.
BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios have ten franchises under development, including six wholly owned games. BioWare Corp. is currently developing the highly anticipated Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios is redefining open-world games with its upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ and Saboteur™, in addition to several unannounced projects.
Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp. employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin; and Brisbane, Australia.
“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,” said John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer. “We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”
With this new gobble, EA just became stronger.
Possibly related:
“One day, perhaps there will be like 5 game companies in the world only – EA, Vivendi Universal, Nintendo, Microsoft and Square Enix.”
Huh?
by -=}{oT~dEv1L 666=- (Oct 14, 2007 at 3 PM)What about Take 2 Interactive?
They also bought over a handful of studios.
In the future, it will be – Take 2, EA, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.
Sony will most probably buy over Square Enix, Microsoft will probably buy over Vivendi. Period.
Sigh, I hope Bioware doesn’t go the way of Westwood.
These are dark days for gaming. These days, I only trust a few names in gaming. That number just got smaller.
by cactusbeetroot (Oct 15, 2007 at 4 PM)