EA Killing Competition

[topcliff 1]

Electronic Arts to Buy 2 Game Makers

By Associated Press

59 minutes ago

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - Seeking to fill gaps in its product lineup, video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. said Thursday it will acquire two software studios from Elevation Partners in a deal worth $860 million, the largest in its history.

The studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, are known for their action, adventure and role-playing games. Elevation owns their parent, VG Holding Corp.

EA, the world's No.1 video game publisher, is known for blockbusters such as "The Sims" and "Madden NFL," but it has at times had less than 10 percent of the lucrative market for role-playing, action and adventure games.

"These guys are powerhouses there, and this acquisition puts us in a strong competitive position now," Frank Gibeau, president of EA Games said in an interview.

Under the terms of the deal, EA will pay VG stockholders up to $620 million in cash and issue as much as $155 million in equity to some of the company's employees. The shares will be subject to certain time- and performance-restricted vesting criteria.

Redwood City-based EA will also assume about $50 million in outstanding VG stock options and has agreed to lend VG up to $35 million until the deal closes.

Company officials declined to elaborate on the financial terms.

Prior to this deal, EA's largest acquisition was its $680 million purchase of mobile game publisher Jamdat Mobile Inc. in 2006.

BioWare and Pandemic have a total of 10 games under development. Together, they employ about 800 people in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, as well as in Canada and Australia.

Microsoft Corp. is planning to publish BioWare's Mass Effect game next month, and the studio is in the early stages of developing a multiplayer online game, EA said. Pandemic is planning to release "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames" and "Saboteur."

"We did this deal because we think it's going to accelerate our growth dramatically," Gibeau said.

The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval, is expected to close in January.

EA expects the deal to lower its 2008 earnings by about 30 to 40 cents per share. EA shares fell $1.22, or 2 percent, to close at $58.69 Thursday but regained $1.26 in extended trading following the news.

Well, now we can expand our dislike of EA. These two companies had popular games, so EA went out and bought them. They're reason is to accelerate growth. They don't need more growth: they dominate the market as is! I believe the real reason EA bought them out was so they ycould kill off some of the competition. Hopefully, EA won't completely mangle these companies games with their twisted logo. And, coming just before the release of SCS, EA is already giving up on it! With the ten games they have under raps, as soon as that's released, they'll overly hype these next games. EA is too big to have competition anymore. It's dominated the market like Wal-Mart.

[Bluebeard 0]

Welcome to the world of business.

[beebs 129]

My god no, not Bioware.. well this sparks the end of dynamic, fresh RPG's for a good while..

[coolotter88 2]

business is war?

[Godzillaman 21]

EA is too afraid that these companies will grow big, so they just buy them out and thats that. Pretty soon it'll just be the Big companies like Microsoft, EA, and Atari (are they bought out?)

[autoVino 26]

Well, these are corperations turning into "trusts", similar to what happened in the late 19th century with the Standard Oil Co. and so on... I think such trusts could be good if used correctly, but they can also cause an unwanted monopoly.

[granto93 4]

Go EA!!!! they make NHL 08 so i dont even care what they do as long as they keep my hockey craving fufilled

[purpledaddy 6]

Yeah, but I bet they won't make a dent into Microsoft's Solitaire and Hearts monopolies!

[Micah 16]

It's a monopoly. What are they going to buy next? Boardwalk?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Damm EA is going to ruin Bioware too

[Mulefisk 15]

Go monopoly! Well, atleast EA now makes even more money, and the executives are even richer. I mean, who needs all those silly independent producers anyways? What do they know about PROFIT?

[BurroDiablo 222]

Ah, EA and their uber capitalistic tendancies... hopefull one day they'll become too massive and collapse in on themselves like a neutron star (to quote Stewie)...

The only company that can can compete with them is Take 2 ... at least they don't mass produce GTA like EA mass produces the Sims... Take 2 rightfully earn their money. Activison are a little bigger than Take 2 I guess, but their about as unimaginative than EA (4th Call of Duty and their JUST getting to Modern warfare... and theres about 10 million Tony Hawks games that are all the same, boring monotonous crap)...

[gabry85 2]

Bioware?

That's the last straw! Will we have to buy all games from EA??

[screamingman12 30]

[sarcasm]Yay EA! they are expanding their market share to put their beutiful logo and fantastic game design skills on more products! Long live EA[/sarcasm]


Seriously, when will someone step in and say "This is Enough!" It can't be customers, because to make up for losses in sales, they will just buy endless streams of comapnies, until the Gov't steps in to break up the ensuing video game monopoly.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

Should be no surprise, as EA started out as merely a marketer and distributer of licensed games created by other studios, at one time once providing the framework and even the groundwork for gamemaking outfits to get their wares to retailers.  Then they grew...

One of my all-time favorite early 1980s games was the amazingly open-ended space exploration game "Starflight" made by Binary Systems. Hundreds of fully explorable star systems and planets on just two 5 1/2 inch floppy disks played on a DOS Tandy machine before the era of built-in hard drives; the whole space adventure genre can partly trace its roots here ("Star Control 2" is almost a direct copy). Enveloped by a seemingly benevolent young EA, Binary Systems only made the ground breaking original game and its sequel "Starflight II" before the small studio was dismembered in what has become an EA serial modus operandi. Some of the former game designers moved elsewhere and created a third sequel, "Starflight III," but the corporate mask was revealed as EA licensing prevented those gamemakers from using the well established "Starflight" name, which was their own original creation, and the popular classic series ended and its beloved name was buried away never to be seen again.

Nothing new; business as usual. This was 20 years ago in the mid-1980s, when the young Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were still butting heads over who would dominate the PC market, and now EA has taken Maxis and SimCity, muhuhahahahaha.

One day, Microsoft and EA will merge to form Cyberdyne Systems, and contracted by Weyland-Yutani, they will develop Skynet and the first Terminator units.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, this is certainly becoming a monstrous company, but there is very good precedent.  One of the biggest companies in the world got there by buying up small competitors, namely the Edison Company, now known as The General Electric Company.  In at least one case, GE bought out one company in order to get its leading engineer, Dr. Steinmetz.  If you didn't know, Steinmetz was the best engineer for water wheel generators in the world at the time.

[flame1396 9]

Bioware!??! Nooooooooo!!!! Man down! Man down!

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

Originally posted by: Odainsaker

One day, Microsoft and EA will merge to form Cyberdyne Systems, and contracted by Weyland-Yutani, they will develop Skynet and the first Terminator units.

quote>

 

This may be closer to the truth than anyone realizes.  Cross EA or MS (or a combination of the 2) with the developing AI technology, and you will have an incredibly sinister set of circumstances. Not killer robots, but maybe the most insidious info gathering, marketing and spyware 'bot anyone can imagine.  And since knowledge=power, it could certainly threaten those in gov't. Maybe my logic is flawed, but it isn't outside the realm of possibility.

[beebs 129]

Heh. And today in the Edmonton Journal, Bioware was voted as one of the top 35 employers in Alberta. Perfect timing for it to be shipped off to EA.