• The Sims is a freak hit. It’s not close to any other game in the industry. It’s to single player games what World of Warcraft is for MMOs.

• RPG and Action Games make up ~35% of the american software market and EA has nothing in these areas. This means that the money is going to the competition.

Case to the point, EA recently announced that the revenue from the sports division that rebrands the same titles every year (Madden, NHL, …) is down roughly 30%. The company has come to rely too much on sequels and sports remakes and that makes them vulnerable. Thus they are diverifying their portfolio, and, on the way, prevent someone else from snapping up BioWare / Pandemic.

– You belittle BioWare’s accomplishment of selling over a million titles for a single-platform game, which KotOR was initially. Actually, you belittle the accomplishment of selling a million units entirely.

– The acquisition fills some holes in EA’s portfolio.

That might be relevant if Maxis’s products were competing for the same part of the market.

Perhaps Hollywood should axe all development of non-iceberg-and-Celine-Dion-based movies too.

I’ve not seen the part of EA’s mission statement that says they should strive to leave areas of the market for Take Two, Microsoft, Blizzard, etc. to earn $100m’s from uncontested.

Rumor + rumor + speculation = ?

Of course they made money, but like I said, not that much money in relation to revenue Maxis has earned for EA. Which makes EA’s high purchase price strange; and still stranger when Pandemic/Bioware’s product is totally at odds with the CEO’s own stated corporate mission.

Did you stop to think that there might be (millions) of gamers who want to buy more involving games, irrespective of how fervently you try to wish them away as irrelevant to your preposterous Second Life new world order?

Your Coen Brothers analogy is equally specious. If the Coen Brothers had the capacity to consistently churn out five or ten of their offbeat modest successes every year it would be approaching accuracy.

You really can be very silly James.

Mercenaries, Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars: KOTOR are some of my personal favorites. With Mercs 2 on the way I believed Pandemic especially would avoid take-over bids, perticularly now.

As for some of the articles comments I must disagree with most of them. KOTOR was a hit in its own right and justifying what a “big” hit is out of the question. For a game to be voted “Game of the Year” is a big title, no matter what the sales of the game are, and to sell over a million copies of the game does say something.

Finally I have to agree with everything “OTL” said in their comment. My sister plays Star Wars: Battlefront with us regularly and she’s more into games like “The Sims” and the Harry Potter games.

With the world of film as an analog, studios like Bioware create Academy Award winners, while huge mainstream successes like ‘The Sims’ are more along the lines of American Idol. Measuring only in dollars and cents can skew your perception of what a ‘quality’ title is, even if it might be a little too difficult for 45 year old non-gamers to pick up.