Now that ALL vivendi games are gonna have the "Blizzard" name (even though Blizzard is just a part of vivendi games), hopefully it doesn't cheapen the brand. I'm sure it will though.
This isn't the first this year- I believe it was, EA has bought Bioware (KotOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect) and Pandemic Studios (Mercenaries and other Lucas Arts titles). Not all bad though- Bioware is still operating at their own facilities, the only real difference is that they now have access to EAs resources.
The Brisbane Pandemic studio is five minutes walk down the road from us, so them being bought out by EA was big news...hopefully they can avoid the usual pattern. As for this merger, I think it is actually a lot smarter than it looks at first. Right now Blizzard has nowhere to go but down. They are incredibly successful, and will be for ages, but with all their revenue basically coming from two core franchises (WoW and the future release of Starcraft 2) it would only take one mis-step for their profits to see a massive drop and share price tank. The Activision portfolio gives Vivendi/Blizzard a much more varied and therefore stable portfolio, while Activision gains because of the insane amounts of profit WoW is currently bringing in, as well as also gaining a larger portfolio from other Vivendi properties.
I've never noticed a merger that went badly in gaming. Never heard of a series going down the pipes because one company bought out another.
I'm sure Eidos thought that too when they bought Core due to a certain Ms Croft......and promptly watched their shares do a Greg Louganis.
Blizzard was (and may still be) based in Irvine California which is but a short drive from us. Long before WoW I visited their office. Basically it was a three room suite filled with arcade games, cardboard cut outs of Trek characters, a huge bouncy ball and a cargo net attached to the ceiling filled with all sorts of toys and crap. Kinda looked like an indoor playground for semi-adults. Not that I had anything to do with it but I'm glad they've gone on to such success.
Only good thing to come from Eidos was LoK series and that was wrapped up, so how is their tanking bad? Do you mean sold as well?
Only one I've heard of is Maxis. Which basically proves my point- if a few independent developers get swallowed what are we really losing? In the merger between Activision and Blizzard they stand to gain great benefits from each other. With EA buying Bioware and Pandemic I only see positive end results. I guess I'll have to excuse myself for being an optimist in this crowd, but the larger scale mergers that have happened in my time have not been negative for gamers, at least in my view. The Squaresoft Enix merger (yay, Squeenix) has yet to create any substantial loss to the gaming market and I have enjoyed a good number of their games to date. I read through the interviews with the head Docs at Bioware and for them it is going to remain business as usual, just with the resources that EA has to offer. My only concern currently is Pandemic- there was no article specifically relating details of the effects of the merger on them, but Mercenaries 2 has been put on delay and that raises questions. AFAIK Mercs2 was being developed by Pandemic and produced by THQ (rather than Lucasarts), but with the merger I would hope any prestanding contracts between Pandemic and THQ will be honored. Leaving prior statement standing, I just checked some sources and it seems that EA is scheduled to produce Mercenaries 2 now. Also read about all those companies, took a minute to find any information regarding them since you only gave half of each name. They were all EA acquisitions that were integrated into EA within 1-3 years and cost the companies some jobs. From those companies other companies were formed that have since developed great games. I understand your position as a member of the industry, but as a consumer I understand the highly competitive market that makes up the gaming industry and do not posess the same fear of studios closing as you do. In each case you mentioned, none of the major series of the smaller companies have gone completely down the drains (except Ultima) and some of the newer startups that resulted have actually been improvements upon the originals.
Origin: Wing commander games (6 games in series pluse the add on packs) Bullfrog: Populous, Syndicate Maxis: Sims, Sim city 1,2,3,4,5,6, Westwood: C&C games Dice Canada: Was a DC mod team i think for BF1942 that made BF2? All of them apart from dice were Huge and when i say huge bigger then EA. C&C pretty much made EA what it is today.
Any series that has ever been bought out by EA has gone down the shitter. Why? Because EA overworks its employees and pushes buggy half-finished games out the door.
Nah, Dice Canada was the group that made the original Battlefield 1942. They later bought out Trauma Studios, the people behind the Desert Combat Mod. Then, 9 months later, Dice Canada was moved to Sweden, and Trauma Studios was let go, the fucking bastards.
Nearly got it right then Anyway anything EA touches turns to shit, they rush it out unfinished and buggier then vista with an old set of drivers. Thats why i refuse to buy anything from EA.
I never liked Wing Commander so no loss for me personally. Never played Populous, disliked Syndicate. Sims and Sim City are still going, the only difference is that the name Maxis has been removed- their souls, on the other hand, were sucked out long ago. C&C is very... hit or miss. Battlefield degraded since the original, no loss to me.
I had never heard of Enix until I switched on a SNES copy of E.V.O. That game is fun AND trolls fundamentalists. It's a double threat.
