Oh dear...Cue John Williams and the Imperial March



le sigh

EA does not need to get any bigger. Please say no.

Well, if you look at EA's lack of success lately, and the declining value of their annual franchises, it's easy to see why they would want to position themselves as publishers with Valve, BioWare, Take Two, and ultimately, their long lusted piece of ass in Ubisoft.

Yearly franchises are dying a slow death, aside from the sports houses which have a following of rabid sports fans, who throw money at anything with their teams involved. Sixty dollars for a football/baseball/basketball game is a pretty good deal to someone who will fork out seven bucks for a beer at an A's game, and get absolutely butt fucked for eleven dollars just to park in Oakland of all places.

If you can position yourself with a myriad of proven houses and take over publishing duties, you're merely raking in the royalties as publisher for already established franchises, that don't necessarily have to come out ever year, since these are multiple studios putting out different titles, it wouldn't take much to figure that these games would invariably be spread out over time naturally.

EA is willing to spend money to market their games to the masses. EA is a name that people buy. Not many people outside of our closed off niche world could tell you what a Take Two is, but they could probably recognize EA or EA Sports.

Just saying, there is a positive way to look at this. It doesn't have to be all: "Oh NOEZ!", all the time.

Take Two are overrated as it is. Getting bought by EA would probably kill them if they had to deliver any sort of quality on EA's annual basis.

dammit gameboi lol, u updated! noeeessss ; ;

I'm hoping this deal doesnt go through but it isnt lookin very that it wont.

EA are getting a lot like the Empire of the industry. I can understand such moves from a money perspective, but I feel EA are taking this too far.

EA will be targeted because they are the largest publisher, and have destroyed some promising talented studios, Looking Glass Studios being on we never hear mentioned, who created the excellent Thief games. Now just imagine what else Looking Glass could have made, if they were still existed enough to grow and find their way. Same goes for Westwood etc.

Sure, the influx of money helps development cost but it also has the chains of financial risk attached, something these large companies like EA don't like. Creativity takes a back seat, and cookie cutter updates get pushed out.

Speaking of Criterion, I believe they are a talented bunch but beyond the positive evolution of Burnout, Criterion have only been able to flex their creative muscle on Black. That's such a shame, as much as I love their Burnout since EA took over. I think Criterion are capable of much more, but EA won't let them.

As for Renderware, its such a shame that this isn't being used anymore, especially with Wii being very capable of running it well for games. This is a bad move by EA, as they could be pushing Burnout and Renderware to Wii owners too.

On a more positive note, EA are changing with some good stuff in the pipe. Tiberium looks like a great edition to C&C. Bioshock and Orange Box have done well for them. There's more on the way.

No one wants another monopoly, after Game recently ate up the horde share of the games retail market in the U.K. Competition is always better to have.

EA and Activision are both cancers on teh gaming community. They both need to learn that quality is way more important than quantity. Annual games get very repetative with each installment, there is not much improvement besides roster updates and such that you can get with a new game from the same franchise each year. I really hope this deal doenst go through.