There has been some big news in the game industry recently–namely Bungie and Microsoft separating, and Bioware/Pandemic being bought out by Electronic Arts. We’re all left here to speculate what it all means. Is this a good thing, a bad thing? Only time can tell.
But like all markets, there are analysts who can somewhat predict what to expect through these transactions and implications. Newsweek‘s local analyst, N’Gai Croal, recently wrote a blog addressing many of these recent industry happenings.
Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) has begun dropping most of its in-house big name developers due to an inherent lack of top quality next gen games and is relying more and more on other developers like Epic, Bioware, etc.
Look at the in-house titles that have been developed (besides Halo 3): Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and the atrocious Shadowrun. The list goes on and on. The only MGS companies that have been really producing tier 1 games are Bungie, Turn 10 Studios and Lionhead.
With the buyout of Bioware/Pandemic, this could mean that Microsoft has a chance to lose one of its most anticipated game franchise exclusives for the 360: Mass Effect. Why? Because Electronic Arts is Mr. Big Corporate and has never been known to be console specific. It’ll only be a matter of time until before they publish Mass Effect 2 and have the sequel open to multiple platforms.
What does this all mean? That MGS has been able to produce some awesome large scale hits, but has failed to manage them long term. (Think Al Davis and the most recent Raiders Superbowl runs– damn that tuck rule).
