EA Buys BioWare/Pandemic
Whoa. For somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million. That… is big. I don’t even really have anything to say other than my first word. This is a big change in an industry as small as ours. Will it be good or bad for EA and Bioware/Pandemic? What about for the industry as a whole? We’ll see. Other companies have been perfectly fine under the umbrella of much larger companies, so everyone will have to play this by ear. Whatever the case, more than a few players reacted pretty quickly to the announcement. GameSpot has details.
In 2000, VeriSign bought Network Solutions for $21 billion.
The $ figure isn’t what gets me, it’s the acquisition. That honestly doesn’t sound like a lot of money for a company like BioWare alone, and when you put Pandemic in there too I think EA got off easy. I’m primarily just stunned by the fact of the purchase alone.
I wonder how this will effect the untitled Bioware MMO that was supposedly in development. I mean EA Mythic has Warhammer coming out next year so I wonder if they are going to moving developers between them so that there is only one MMO studio?
When I first read this it was at a site that is known for ‘pranky’ news headlines.
I dug deeper and cried myself to sleep.
EA will ruin the makers of NWN and the soon to be released Mass Effect.
I wish there was an emoticon to express my deep sadness.
I know to many of us $800 million sounds like a lot, but how much did Disney pay for a webiste? – $700 million. Which is really worth more, a proven developer with another smash hit on the way in Mass Effect or a website? I know, I know, just look at Google.com and it’s $600+ stock price.
I think EA got very rewarding deal here. Not only do they get the name Bioware, its developers (should they keep them), but they’ve got a development house that can get any IP they want pretty much (D&D and Star Wars).
I just how EA can be a bit more ‘hands off’ with this studio, they’ve proven themselves as the cream of the crop, much like Blizzard has. EA, just publish the titles and let BioWare work their magic.
[...] are now owned as a subsidiary of Activision. This is a mega deal, even bigger than the recent EA buyout of BioWare/Pandemic. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot I have to say specifically about this, [...]