Jimmy Shears

That may be true as well, but if buying exclusivity rights wouldn't be profitable for anyone, EA wouldn't have to worry about the competition doing it either. Nobody would do it. And the only way for exclusivity rights to turn a profit for one company is if it brings new players in or keeps current players from leaving. If it wasn't profitable to buy exclusivity rights, EA would actually presumably be happy that the competition wasted their money.

Well that's certainly the hope, anyway. As far as the NFL exclusivity goes, it's certainly true that other companies can still make good and potentially successful games. But it's a somewhat different market. There's a substantial market of people who want to buy a game each year with all the current NFL stars on all the right teams. These consumers have only one real choice if they want a game like that. It's funny, because EA makes exactly the same argument you do: this deal won't stop other companies from competing with us! The argument only goes so far, though--EA wouldn't have gotten exclusivity rights if they didn't think a huge number of people would either start buying EA's games instead of the competition's games or keep buying EA's games instead of switching to the competition's games. However you shake it, that's something that can only have a negative effect on consumers. Maybe EA really is improving, and I don't necessarily doubt that. But I certainly wouldn't set my expectations too high just because they've had a couple recent successes and they say they're improving. There's no tangible evidence at all that they've actually changed their business practices; quite the contrary. The BioWare purchase is pretty much exactly what people expect from EA. And even if EA is in fact improving, nothing will stop it from backsliding if that's what it decides it wants to do. I have no doubt that the top dogs at BioWare/Pandemic believe that the purchase will have no negative effect on the quality of their games. But then again, they must know that it will have an effect on their reputation, right? And even if EA plans on a hands off approach for now, EA does have certain expectations about BioWare/Pandemic's future performance. What happens if those expectations aren't met? Or what if EA simply comes to believe that BioWare/Pandemic could be even more profitable if it did things more like the rest of EA? People may not like EA, and their games may not have a reputation for quality, but EA is a very successful and profitable company. They know how to maximize profit on games.

That's generally true, but notice how little effort it takes to make a good update to the franchise every year. I mean, certainly it makes sense to have a new iteration every year, and it makes sense why people would continue to buy each one. But it does make the fact that the games are generally good less impressive. All they have to do is take the same game they've been using each of the past few years, update the roster, refine the mechanics a bit, and maybe toss in a new idea or two. What's infuriating about EA is that even though they already really didn't need to innovate all that much in their Madden franchise to keep their customers satisfied, rather than keep their position as market leader by innovating and making the highest quality football game out there, they essentially just purchased their continued dominance and eliminated any competition in the annually updated NFL football market by spending a huge amount of money on exclusivity rights. A huge investment in their football franchise, and you have to wonder if that money couldn't have been invested in a way that would have been beneficial to EA because of a benefit to players, rather than beneficial to EA because of a detriment to competitors which was also detrimental to players. Even if all the horrible things people say about EA were false, their bad track record didn't exist, and EA was actually a wonderful company, I think you have to ask whether EA's nasty reputation in and of itself isn't a bad thing for BioWare. Not like it's going to have a severe impact on BioWare's profitability, but BioWare is a company in many ways built on reputation. EA is hoping to improve its reputation by buying BioWare. If that's possible, then logically it must be at least equally possible that BioWare's reputation will suffer. I don't know what kind of direct or indirect effect that would have on BioWare one way or the other, but it can't be a good thing. Would good developers be less likely to want to work for BioWare if its reputation took a hit? Would BioWare be less likely to attract intensely loyal fans as it has in the past? At the very least, I think you can ask the question.

I'm sure you have heard of the legend of the frog and the scorpion? Sometimes a company (or a person, or a scorpion) does things just because its what they do. Even if it is against their interests, it's just their nature. Assuming that EA is el Evil Empire, to get to that point, they have to be a rational actor. Afterall, irrationally going from one blunder to the next does not make a company worth multi-billions of dollars. They may not necessarily be interested in the art of video games, but they are interested in the $$ aspects of it. A scorpion -and correct me if I'm wrong- does not have the cognitive facilities to be interested in long-term survivability. They will not sacrifice something in the short term that will bear much fruit in the long term. They are only rational in the point that it cares for its own short term survival no matter the consequences. With Biodemic, they have two studios that are both critical and financial darlings. To EA, I'd imagine they'd see that as a commodity to value, rather than discard. The best thing for EA to do is for them to allow Bio and Pandemic do whatever the hell they have been doing and keep it up with as few memos as possible. From what I understand, that is John R.'s plan when EA bought them out. ...how long that lasts...well I suppose it depends on how long Bio keeps getting good reviews and millions in sales. As far as rationality goes, there are sound financial reasons not to care as much as BioWare does about how good your games are. Of course, when all other things are equal, a game that gets great reviews is better than a game that gets mediocre reviews. But all other things are never equal. Better games take time and often face delays so that everything can be just right. And often, they take a lot of risk. And sometimes, an excellent, critically-acclaimed game might not be created or targeted to the largest market. None of these things will be attractive to EA. EA makes money in a different way than BioWare does. BioWare has built a solid reputation, and people feel confident that they can buy BioWare games without needing to read reviews because they know BioWare cares about quality above all else. BioWare makes good money in the long term because its games are often classics that people come back and play years after release, regardless of whether the title was a blockbuster at release. EA, on the other hand, makes investments. It buys out smaller corporations, and it is very good at making sure it makes its money back sooner rather than later. EA makes money by increasing its market share. If EA just barely breaks even on the BioWare purchase and then shuts BioWare down, it's a success for EA because it removes a competitor from the video game market in general, gets EA a foothold in the RPG market, and overall gives EA greater market share and therefore more money. It can spend tons of money on exclusivity rights with the NFL because EA has tons of capital and it's essentially just outright purchasing market share. EA's focus will be on making a return on its investment in BioWare, not on making sure that the quality of BioWare's games doesn't change. If the two goals coincide, then fine. But if EA decides BioWare needs to take fewer risks, appeal to a wider market, and release games more quickly in order to make more money, that's what's going to happen. Rest assured, EA only cares about BioWare's reputation to the extent that it is profitable. EA expects to break even on $860 million by 2009. It expects BioWare to release ten games by 2011--so in three or four years. I'm not sure if this includes Mass Effect. By comparison, Mass Effect is BioWare's first game since Jade Empire in 2005. The Origin buyout is an example of a situation that was highly profitable for EA but was not so great for Origin, a studio which at the time had a similarly solid reputation. It presumably would have been better for EA had Origin survived and continued to make blockbusters, but the bottom line was that EA had no real interest in letting Origin do things the way they did them before the acquisition. EA simply has different interests than a dedicated developer. A summary of the Origin story: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...quest-of-Origin