GI’s Take on the BioWare/Pandemic Acquisition

GamesIndustry.biz has taken a closer look at EA’s acquisition of BioWare/Pandemic, reiterating the facts of the deal and offering some commentary of their own.

Not everyone is entirely happy to see EA picking up Bioware and Pandemic, though. The stock market’s roar of approval has been matched by a cry of anguish from games fans (and even, privately, some developers), who are concerned about what this means for the output of the vastly popular studios.

They may have a point. Electronic Arts’ history with the studios it acquires is not so much chequered, as downright bleak. From ancient industry history like Bullfrog through to Westwood, Maxis and even Criterion, EA has consistently demonstrated a propensity to assimilate rather than incubate, absorbing studios into its own structure and rapidly crushing the unique identity which, arguably, made them valuable in the first place.

It doesn’t exactly ease concerns over the handling of the studios to calculate just how successful they need to be for EA’s USD 860 million gamble to pay off. Analysts at Bank of America have suggested that Bioware and Pandemic need to produce at least two or three hit titles a year for the next five years if EA’s going to see a reasonable return on investment. It’s not an unreasonable target, given that the studios presently have ten titles in development between them, but it’s a sufficient challenge that it’s going to take immense willpower for EA’s executives to keep their hands off the development process.

They may have ten titles in development at the moment, but are there any developers on this planet that are capable of consistently kicking out as many as three titles a year and have them sell over two million copies each? No. And therein lies the problem.