What is going on at EA?

Pushtrak

Owing to the lack of EA showing up at the Sony event, there has been talk about Microsoft and EA having some sort of deal done. Remember how Respawn was formed after West and Zampella left Activision? Well, West is no longer with Respawn. Today, I'm reading they shut down Bioware San Francisco and the cans Dead Space series. It was the last one in particular which got me to make this thread. Any news on EA I've missed?

SebBerkovich

Dead space has run it's course, not sad to see it go.

If you want to play something else like Dead Space 3, just pick up what ever FPS EA comes out with next.

Pushtrak

Honestly, my concern isn't exactly with Dead Space, it's where is this going to go if they'll abandon that so fast? I wouldn't be surprised with Mass Effect or Dragon Age being abandoned after the next game in them not doing "as well as expected".

ShadowHearth

I finished dead space one and finished dead space few days ago. What a fantastic set of games, with such rich world and story.
It just heart breaking to see wtf they did with dead space 3. if they are canning it, it means they realised wtf they did to the franchise and now just leave its corpse in peace.
EA was quite close with Sony. All BF3 content was always first on ps3. I defenetly don't think that EA will pull some bull**** to be extra nice to Xbox. Though you never know with those clowns. So far they declared that all their games will have multiplayer and all of the future games will have micro transactions.

Captain Chaos

EA should stop telling developers what to make. They messed up the Mass Effect series, 1 was the only RPG and made under Microsoft studios. They messed up Dragon Age and now Dead Space. Then they won't let the likes of Dice make Mirror's Edge 2 but force them to make a ton of BF3 DLC.

Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 1, Dead Space 1 and Mirrors Edge. All classic games, great IPs destroyed by EA's greed.

hooradiation

Pushtrak wrote: »

Honestly, my concern isn't exactly with Dead Space, it's where is this going to go if they'll abandon that so fast?

They haven't taken the dead space franchise and thrown it into the sun, they've just canned the current version of Dead space 4 (which was in preproduction)
There is literally nothing stopping them picking it up in the future and continuing on, or giving the license to another one of their studios.

FutureGuy

Not sad to see Dead Space go, given the fcuk they made of the series with the third game. The first Dead Space was superb and was the perfect replacement for RE in the survival horror genre. I hope they learn their lesson from it.

FWIW I have no problem with microtransactions when done correctly (just like FIFA UT and ME3 multiplayer). But when you start adding MT into the single player experience, they can jump down a hole.

When I played FIFA, I must have spent about 70 euro in packs, and I'm sure I have spent more in ME3.

johnny_ultimate

Pushtrak wrote: »

Honestly, my concern isn't exactly with Dead Space, it's where is this going to go if they'll abandon that so fast? I wouldn't be surprised with Mass Effect or Dragon Age being abandoned after the next game in them not doing "as well as expected".

Retiring or 'resting' a series or studio that is proving a significant financial burden with increasingly limited artistic success? Seems pretty logical to me.

TBH I wish more series were abandoned. Gaming is too obsessed with sequels and direct iteration - the returns are very frequently diminishing. If it leads to more funds for new ideas and franchises, so long Mass Effect! Take a hike Dead Space! Dragon Age has always been **** so its retirement would be mere wishful thinking from me.

FutureGuy

Captain Chaos wrote: »

EA should stop telling developers what to make. They messed up the Mass Effect series, 1 was the only RPG and made under Microsoft studios. They messed up Dragon Age and now Dead Space. Then they won't let the likes of Dice make Mirror's Edge 2 but force them to make a ton of BF3 DLC.

Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 1, Dead Space 1 and Mirrors Edge. All classic games, great IPs destroyed by EA's greed.

ME3>>>>>>>>>ME1

Captain Chaos

hooradiation wrote: »

They haven't taken the dead space franchise and thrown it into the sun, they've just canned the current version of Dead space 4 (which was in preproduction)
There is literally nothing stopping them picking it up in the future and continuing on, or giving the license to another one of their studios.

Visceral Games should just go out on their own and/or get a new publisher. Let EA go and f themselves. VG should make the game and the experience they want to make.

Same goes for Bioware.

Just left EA bang out a new FIFA every year and leave it at that.

Captain Chaos

FutureGuy wrote: »

ME3>>>>>>>>>ME1

Not a hope. ME3 was the nail in the coffin of the ME franchise. Talk about jumping the shark.

Gunmonkey

Not too suprised by this, give the amount of sales a AAA game needs to make a profit these days and the poor sales DS3 racked up. The sheer speed at which this was announced is pretty damn fast. Pity, the opening chapters of DS3 were nice as you traveled between the ships and scavenged stuff ehre and there, sadly then it fell into the shooty-shooty corridor action of the first 2 games.

FutureGuy

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Not a hope. ME3 was the nail in the coffin of the ME franchise. Talk about jumping the shark.

The only thing I disliked about ME3 was trying to force Kinect into the system. Multiplayer is one of the most enjoyable experiences on XBOX imho.

Pushtrak

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 1, Dead Space 1 and Mirrors Edge. All classic games, great IPs destroyed by EA's greed.

Dragon Age 2 was quite disappointing, but I don't see how that can be put on EA. I don't really see what you are pinning on of Mass Effect 2? The season pass? Mass Effect 3, ok, the multiplayer.

hooradiation wrote: »

They haven't taken the dead space franchise and thrown it into the sun, they've just canned the current version of Dead space 4 (which was in preproduction)
There is literally nothing stopping them picking it up in the future and continuing on, or giving the license to another one of their studios.

Do you honestly expect to see a DS4 in the next, say 4 or 5 years? Or ever?

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Retiring or 'resting' a series or studio that is proving a significant financial burden with increasingly limited artistic success? Seems pretty logical to me.

Is it because of the game being a financial burden, or is it because it isn't profitable enough? And if the latter, is that worth shutting down a studio for?

TBH I wish more series were abandoned. Gaming is too obsessed with sequels and direct iteration - the returns are very frequently diminishing. If it leads to more funds for new ideas and franchises, so long Mass Effect! Take a hike Dead Space! Dragon Age has always been **** so its retirement would be mere wishful thinking from me.

I like new IPs, but those IPs I love I enjoy seeing more stuff done with. I don't like yearly updates to things, but seeing more within a universe that I'm enjoying is something that is good.

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Visceral Games should just go out on their own and/or get a new publisher. Let EA go and f themselves. VG should make the game and the experience they want to make.

Same goes for Bioware.

Just left EA bang out a new FIFA every year and leave it at that.

EA will maintain rights to the franchises, most likely, so that wouldn't happen.

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Not a hope. ME3 was the nail in the coffin of the ME franchise. Talk about jumping the shark.

The game didn't need multiplayer and the ending wasn't the best. What else did you object to? I think jumping the shark is overstating things greatly.

FutureGuy wrote: »

The only thing I disliked about ME3 was trying to force Kinect into the system. Multiplayer is one of the most enjoyable experiences on XBOX imho.

Kinect voice commands? If you didn't use it, you weren't missing anything, and I thought it was kinda fun when I tried it. Don't really feel the need to do a playthrough with it on, but at least there is a use where kinect is fun.

gizmo

Respawn have a deal signed via the EA Partner setup, West leaving has absolutely nothing to do with them.

Bioware San Franciso was just EA2D rebranded, a label which only made browser-based spinoffs of their more popular titles, not a massive loss all things considered. It also existed within EA HQ so I'd imagine it was closed as a cost cutting exercise with development duties being handed over to another internal team.

Before Dead Space 3 was released EA announced that the series needed to sell 5 million copies to survive, obviously it didn't do this so it's gone, at least in its current form as was being worked on by Visceral Montreal. The problem of course being a niche survival horror game will never be able to do this so it was always going to be doomed in anything resembling it's original state.

On the other hand, as johnny_ultimate says, I don't necessarily see the ending of such franchises as a bad thing thing. If EA want to keep a small number of big franchises in their stables selling these kinds of numbers that's perfectly fine, as long as they continue to release other games in the meantime to test the waters. That was, after all, what Dead Space, Mirrors Edge etc.. were. Just because the sequels to these games were disappointing (or indeed non-existent) doesn't mean many of us didn't enjoy the hell out of them when they released.

Captain Chaos wrote: »

EA should stop telling developers what to make. They messed up the Mass Effect series, 1 was the only RPG and made under Microsoft studios. They messed up Dragon Age and now Dead Space. Then they won't let the likes of Dice make Mirror's Edge 2 but force them to make a ton of BF3 DLC.

Both Dead Space and Mirrors Edge suffered from awful sales at launch, it was only after the games saw significant price drops and word had spread that they began to pick up, eventually reaching a level where EA decided to give some of them another shot. I'm not saying it isn't a shame, I absolutely adored ME and DS1, but at the same time, it's completely unsurprising given the costs/risks involved in creating such new content/IPs.

Let me put it a different way, three and four months respectively after release, Mirrors Edge and Dead Space had broken one million sales. By late 2010, they had just broken over 2 million sales. Currently, Battlefield 3 Premium has 2.9m subscribers.

As for the Visceral and Bioware comments, they can't just go out and find a new publisher. Visceral is, in fact, just an internal EA studio formerly known as EA Redwood Shores and only came into existence in 2009. I'm not 100% about the makeup of the Montreal studio though, EA already have EA Montreal up there who were in charge of the Army of Two series and were meant to be the ones being closed and/or affected by layoffs. As such, I'm not sure if they're the same entity or not.

Bioware were also purchased (along with Pandemic) by EA from their previous owners, the private equity company Elevation Parents (who counts our very own Bono on its board as it happens), so they too can't just pack their bags and leave. Outside of founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk of course, they've already done that.

As an aside, EA didn't say every game would have multiplayer, they said every game would have an online element attached to it. Still not good but at least not the worst case.

It should also be pointed out that what's going on currently isn't exactly uncommon. They laid off a couple of hundred people around this time last year and before that did something similar when they went through their large restructuring and closed down Black Box in Vancouver and relocated it elsewhere in Canada.

ShadowHearth

Gunmonkey wrote: »

Not too suprised by this, give the amount of sales a AAA game needs to make a profit these days and the poor sales DS3 racked up. The sheer speed at which this was announced is pretty damn fast. Pity, the opening chapters of DS3 were nice as you traveled between the ships and scavenged stuff ehre and there, sadly then it fell into the shooty-shooty corridor action of the first 2 games.

I wonder who is to be blamed for poor sales on DS3? Maybe because DS3 was a horror survival fan game and the idea was to shoot out the limbs of the monsters. EA dipped its cock in to DS franchise and went "you know what, shooting off limbs is too damn complicated, just make it less scary, more actiony and throw micro transaction in top of that!"

cherryghost

The Dead Space series was never a huge seller anyways, Dead Space 2 has barely over 1mil sold on each format, so in some way I can understand why they've put it on hold when you compare their sales for other franchises.

That said, Dragon Age 2 sales were pitiful also. Wouldn't be surprised if they done the same on that.

degrassinoel

Pushtrak wrote: »

Honestly, my concern isn't exactly with Dead Space, it's where is this going to go if they'll abandon that so fast? I wouldn't be surprised with Mass Effect or Dragon Age being abandoned after the next game in them not doing "as well as expected".

They wont, there was an ME4 announcement in November, it's currently in production at their Montreal HQ. I cant imagine a sequel to one of the biggest sellers of 2012 being thrown in the bin ever.. by anyone.

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/11/12/an-update-from-bioware-montreal/

Just hope they don't sell it to Disney..

johnny_ultimate

Captain Chaos wrote: »

E
Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 1, Dead Space 1 and Mirrors Edge. All classic games, great IPs destroyed by EA's greed.

Not really.

Mirror's Edge was a sometimes brilliant game regularly crippled by Dice's oftentimes poor level design (remember the indoor levels?) - I don't know if they really had the talent to bring the idea and engine into their own. It was a commercial failure so it's not surprising it hasn't reappeared. And yet I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine the series will get a revisit - it's constantly being teased and rumoured.

Mass Effect 1 was a frequently dull, clunky game that buried its good ideas under a lot of poor design choices. Contrary to the bizarre complaint that it's inherently better because 'it's an RPG' (which barely means anything), the sequels for many (myself included) were much more ambitious and successful experiments. Sometimes streamlining a game's mechanics is for the best - in this case the combat was more satisfying and the narrative more compelling. Mass Effects 3 perceived failings were largely down to Bioware's ability to follow through on the story they began - no failing of EA. Even then, the ongoing popularity of that game's multiplayer shows they at least did something significant right.

As I said above, Dragon Age IMO was a poor game in the first place with one of the most appallingly derivative fantasy settings in the history of gaming. Again, Bioware can be heavily blamed for its failings in both the first and second outings. The disaster that was The Old Republic further illustrates that Bioware are hardly the paragons of great game design they long, long ago might have been.

Dead Space 1 was a surprise as being a generally satisfying action-horror game - it was hardly original (just borrowed most of its ideas from sci-fi history) but it was a lot of fun. The sequels' failings are only partially attributable to EA's business practices - there was a dearth of imagination in the general game design in any case, especially once the novelty of the basic gameplay and setting wore off. Visceral cannot entirely escape blame there as the game's feature far greater foundational problems than a microtransaction-enhanced ammo system.

EA's goal is to profit - it's no more or less greedy than any of the other major publishers. Indeed, despite a few notable failures a lot of their games in recent years have very purposefully upped the quality mark, and there's significantly less EA shovelware in the last five years or so. Not all their business practices are immune from criticism, but at the same time it's laughable how much they're villifed online for engaging in perfectly logical, sensible commercial practices like putting an end (or least resting) unprofitable studios and stagnating franchises.

CastorTroy

Wonder if any problems they may be having will make them want to try and mend bridges with Nintendo and support the Wii U so they have another platform.

Falthyron

I am going to attempt to play Devil's Advocate on this. Maybe, EA are doing a good thing? Allow me to explain...

Dead Space - Closed.
Medal of Honour - Closed.
Star Wars The Old Republic - Failure, although I hear micro-transactions in this game are making them money.
Crysis - Third is probably the last with Crytek's new Warface coming as a F2P title.

Presumably, the next Dragon Age will be the last and I can't see the new Mass Effect being anything close to the success of Mass Effect 1 or 2.

These are titles coming from an extensive history and probably running out of ideas. As such, instead of milking these cash cows it will force EA and it's developers to come up with new ideas and new games. After all, closing all these titles means new ones have to be made - EA publish games, after all.

Now I turn my attention to SimCity, which (according to reviews) is going to be a huge success. A lot of time, effort, and new innovative ideas have produced a genuinely interesting and probably successful game.

Regardless of the 'go EA' and 'EA is doing brilliantly' bull**** coming from the executives, they know they are bleeding. It's painfully obvious. You can't read any article or go on any forum without a majority of people trash-talking EA. Poor sales and the closure of studios is another example of what might be perceived as an internal crisis matched with a vacuum of fresh ideas and intellectual properties.

To sum up, I am relatively content with closing down titles that are simply not working. Sure, we can blame EA for the direction certain games were forced to take (e.g Dead Space, Medal of Honour), but perhaps there is some respite in the fact that retiring these titles might lead to them taking chances on new concepts.

And before everyone jumps on me about EA's pressure on developers; yes, I agree - they are idiots. They have ruined BioWare, Westwood, Visceral, etc, etc. But, it is, what it is and I can only hope the retirement of these franchises MIGHT, HOPEFULLY, lead to new properties and games with fresh ideas.

P.S. I have no hope for the new CnC either, or Dragon Age 3, or Mass Effect 4. In fact, the only sequel I can be sure of that will be decent is FIFA14 :P

P.P.S - I can't believe I am defending EA; I feel so unclean...

degrassinoel

CastorTroy wrote: »

Wonder if any problems they may be having will make them want to try and mend bridges with Nintendo and support the Wii U so they have another platform.

they released me3 on the wii u last year, what was the deal before/after that to make them bury the hatchet?

hooradiation

Captain Chaos wrote: »

EA should stop telling developers what to make.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Unless you think EA should just hand out money developers and hope that it all just happens works out...

Kirby

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Mass Effect 1 was a frequently dull, clunky game that buried its good ideas under a lot of poor design choices. Contrary to the bizarre complaint that it's inherently better because 'it's an RPG' (which barely means anything), the sequels for many (myself included) were much more ambitious and successful experiments.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Dragon Age has always been **** so its retirement would be mere wishful thinking from me.

As I said above, Dragon Age IMO was a poor game in the first place with one of the most appallingly derivative fantasy settings in the history of gaming.

Well we are all entitled to our opinions. Your's is wrong, but you are entitled to it.

Both ME1 and DA1 are flawed yet great games. Gems in an era of brown corridor shooters and facebook games. ME1 has issues. Some were corrected in the sequel but I think you are missing the point that the sequels wouldn't have existsed without the risk taken by supplying a game in a genre that many publishers thought was dead. Dragon age 1 was similar in that it felt like a game from years gone by and bucked alot of the modern trends of hand holding.

It's clear from your posts that you don't like RPG's. Thats fine....thats your tastes. Those games are still good games. Not being your cup of tea doesn't make them bad.

Now excuse me while I run and hide before the mod squad arrive to thank all your posts and argue with me.

johnny_ultimate

Kirby wrote: »

It's clear from your posts that you don't like RPG's. Thats fine....thats your tastes. But those games are still good games. Not being your cup of tea doesn't make them bad.

Nope, I actually love what would regularly be classified as RPGs, especially of the Japanese kind. Several "hardcore" RPGs are amongst my favourite games, including my single-most favourite.

Doesn't mean I can't think ME2 is a superior game to ME1 in many critical ways.

Kirby

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Nope, I actually love what would regularly be classified as RPGs, especially of the Japanese kind. Several "hardcore" RPGs are amongst my favourite games, including my single-most favourite.

Doesn't mean I can't think ME2 is a superior game to ME1 in many critical ways.

In many ways, ME2 was a better game. I would never argue otherwise. But you can't hold up ME2 as great, successful endeavor when it is just an improved version of a game that was "awful". It makes no sense.

johnny_ultimate

Kirby wrote: »

In many ways, ME2 was a better game. I would never argue otherwise. But you can't hold up ME2 as great, successful endeavor when it is just an improved version of a game that was "awful". It makes no sense.

I never said Mass Effect 1 was awful? I just said it was a frequently dull, clunky game which nonetheless had good ideas much better developed in its sequel (which wasn't exactly perfect either, but came together in a much more interesting way).

dorkacle

I seriously doubt they will be exclusive to Xbox or any one platform at all.
It makes more economical sense for them to produce games on all platforms, picking one just reduces their potential audience and means they are banking on their choice of platform to be the successful one.

Can't see many major developers/publishers going completely exclusive to one platform considering the cost of developing games now, and I imagine that is only going to go up on the next gen.

CastorTroy

degrassinoel wrote: »

they released me3 on the wii u last year, what was the deal before/after that to make them bury the hatchet?

Supposedly there was a fallout over Nintendo not using Origin so now EA aren't exactly throwing their games at them. Like a Crysis 3 dev said recently they had it up and running on Wii U and they were told by higher ups to stop as it wouldn't be supported. Not sure of all the details but things aren't smooth between them.

ShadowHearth

hooradiation wrote: »

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Unless you think EA should just hand out money developers and hope that it all just happens works out...

Thanks to this attitude Franchises die and Developer studios close down. Next time the one who pays should ask piper if it is a good idea to play Funeral March on the Wedding day.

super_furry

Dead Space was a great franchise run into the ground by EA. The first Dead Space was a surprise hit, a great horror game at a time when all the other great horror franchises were becoming too action oriented. The sequel struck the perfect note between action, tension and drama, while for the last game they ramped it all the way up so that it became a pure shooter.

There's enough shooters on the market, people don't want more and when you expect Dead Space 3 to sell as well as its predecessors after fundamentally changing what it is because of market research, then you're stupid.