EA Buys BioWare!?

Wow, major news for the RPG industry! Renowned RPG developer BioWare has recently been purchased by Electronic Arts.

BioWare is famous for creating top notch games like Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, with the latest title Mass Effect coming out next month.

EA acquired BioWare and Pandemic Studios for $620 million plus an additional $190 million in other charges. These studios and their 800 employees will now become part of Electronic Arts.

EA CFO Warren Jenson was quoted as saying, "We're very excited about the revenue potential. We see that in both '09 and '10 to be in excess of $300 million."

Will this have an impact on the quality of BioWare's games? Will it change anything about the highly anticipated Mass Effect? Let's hope not. BioWare is one of gaming's most respected developers, so it would be an atrocity to see something hinder their game development. One one hand, having the funding and resources of a massive company like EA behind them could be great! On the other hand, I worry that it might force BioWare into becoming a "slave" company of EA. I fear that BioWare might lose some of their unique identity and start churning out mainstream titles. After all, EA is known for making a lot of games, but they aren't necessarily known for making quality games like BioWare is. We'll have to wait and see...

Read more about this breaking story here!