Pondering EA's Move Towards Hardcore

The site GigaOM is picking up its games coverage again, and kicks off with an article speculating on just what EA was thinking when it purchased BioWare and Pandemic. On the face of it, the move doesn't make much sense. BioWare is a great development house, but from EA's perspective their games are 'small potatoes'. "So why did they spend so much? The acquisition includes several titles for the Wii and DS already in development, and those may have breakout potential. There's tremendous gamer buzz around BioWare's upcoming RPG Mass Effect, but in all likelihood, it'll do similar numbers to the studio's million-plus-selling Knights of the Old Republic -- a hit, but not a huge one. There are rumors that BioWare is developing a 'Star Wars'-themed MMO, but if that's what inspired the purchase, the mystery only deepens: Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news."

Lack of own creativity, maybe?

[F-3582]

Remember when they bought out Westwood and literally killed off the Command and Conquer and Lands of Lore series? They're probably thinking along the lines of "If we can't make decent games, no one should."

Galaxies didn't fail, Sony did.

[MicktheMech]

Even if there's no movie out I think a Star Wars theme will provide a much larger potential market than most other MMOS. I don't think the Galaxies failure will stop anyone that was completely due to Sony and had nothing to do with it being a Star Wars themed MMORPG.

I've said it before, I'll say it again

[NeutronCowboy]

Riccitiello paid off some friends [elevation.com] and himself [barrons.com] with his acquisition [gamespot.com]. Bioware and Pandemic aren't worth $840 million, since their total accumulated revenue since inception has barely been higher. Riccitiello made gobs of cash, his buddies made gobs of cash, and Bioware and Pandemic will be gutted for the sake of efficiency [arstechnica.com]. There's nothing else here. If anything, this will only be the milestone where EA will have started to go downhill. Goodbye Bioware. I hope the founders made enough money to start from scratch again.

Commentators don't get it

[ZorbaTHut]

There are rumors that BioWare is developing a 'Star Wars'-themed MMO, but if that's what inspired the purchase, the mystery only deepens: Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news.

Yes.

That's because it was a bad game. Bioware is a good company because they make good games.

If you take a turd, and put a "Star Wars" label on it, you still have a turd, it's just that now you have a branded turd. It might sell a bit better but it's not going to be extraordinary. Maybe someone in EA has actually realized this?

SWG flopped because....

[Liquidrage]

Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news.

That's because it sucked. Royally.
It was buggy, laggy (the commercial database that kept track of everything couldn't handle the 8 gazzilion read and writes a second their poor design called for. shocking!), the classes were boring, the progression repetitive, the rewards non-existant. You were asked to play as Background_Character_01 in a world where you wanted to be Luke or Darth. At least fantasy MMO's let you kill the occasional rare spawn, or eventually dragons and the like.

A good game is a good game. And that's no different for an MMO. WoW was a good game, that's why it did well. Most MMO's these days are just pure crap. If a company released something good, and polished, it would do fine. SW theme or no SW theme. But crap is always going to be crap.