Electronic Arts acquires Bioware and Pandemic

Electronic Arts has announced the acquisition of two top developers in the form of BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. This gives EA control of not just the studios, but six strong properties too including it seems Mass Effect and Mercenaries sequels.

The two companies currently employ 800 people in four studios in Canada, USA and Australia.

"These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I'm glad to be working with them again. They'll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties," said John Riccitiello, EA's Chief Executive Officer.

"Pandemic Studios remains focused on attracting the best talent and creating blockbuster action games," said Josh Resnick, President and Co-founder of Pandemic Studios. "As a worldwide publishing leader, EA represents the ideal partner to bring our titles to market as global entertainment events."

"We are truly excited by John Riccitiello's new vision for EA," said Ray Muzyka, Co-founder and CEO of BioWare Corp. "This vision is consistent with BioWare's focus on crafting the highest quality story-driven games in the world. It will enable us to further the careers of the passionate, creative and hard working teams at BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin."

Big Money

The publisher has paid top dollar for these two studios, $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of the company.

Microsoft has quickly responded to the acquisition to allay fears that Mass Effect for Xbox 360 will be delayed. Posting on the gamerscoreblog John Pocaro explained that we can still expect to see Mass Effect released on November 20th.

"EA’s acquisition of BioWare will not change the current release schedule for Mass Effect. All of us are excited for the game’s worldwide release, starting Nov. 20. Everyone at BioWare (the owners of the Mass Effect IP) and Microsoft (the exclusive publisher of Mass Effect) are committed to keeping everything on track. And yes, Mass Effect will be an Xbox 360 exclusive, despite any rumours (or wishful thinking) to the contrary."

And what of the sequels, has Microsoft lost exclusivity? That's not clear right now.

"Since neither BioWare nor Microsoft have made any announcements about sequels or publishing deals, we aren’t ready to say anything more about the future of the franchise, but you can be sure we’ll be discussing a lot of things with BioWare (and EA) in the weeks to come. For now, any further news will have to come from EA or BioWare. "

It's not been a great few weeks for developer relations and Microsoft Games Studios. PGR developer Bizarre Creations has become part of Activision, Bungie studios has sought its independence and now these two high profile Xbox (though not entirely exclusively) developers have moved further into the hands of a rival publisher.

While EA has suffered criticism in the past for strip mining development acquisitions and destroying their identity - think Westwood for example - things seem to have changed at the publisher of late.

Do you think this purchase is a good move for the developers involved and more importantly for gamers?