When the news hit that EA was buying Pandemic Studios and BioWare, a collective, "Well, there goes the neighborhood," could be heard around the world. The concern being that once the corporate tentacles of Electronic Arts dug into their new acquisitions, that the excellence of the games from these studios would start to suffer.
Josh Resnick of Pandemic was asked by GamePro if he thought his studio’s quality would suffer as a result of the takeover by EA. His words were pretty succinct as he said with laughter, "Over my dead body."
Resnick assured that their high standards would still be intact and that they would have total autonomy.
"At the end of the day, we are just as focused, if not more so, on creating amazing games that our fans will go nuts over. We have such amazing games in the pipeline right now, and EA is so enthusiastic over them – that’s one of the reasons we’ve joined them. EA’s mantra has been "look guys, we’re going to stand out of the way… you guys continue to do what you know how to do. We’re here to support you."
The talks over the buyout went quickly after Pandemic was first contacted by EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello. Resnick said, "We’ve been talking for a few months. From the time we got that call from [EA CEO] John Riccitiello, we took a step back and said ‘you know, this really does make sense.’ After that, it went really fast. We had a collaborative discussion with all our partners and EA, and we all sat around saying ‘yeah, this makes sense.’"
One thing is certain however–the gaming community will be keeping a watchfull eye on BioWare and Pandemic to see if this purchase by EA really makes sense or rather, just "cents," for all parties concerned.
