6. Acquisition Of Studios
What do you do when you don't have good enough developers or people are purchasing your competitors products? Well if you're EA you just buy the studio out and then warp the game to your own desires! Since 1987 EA has taken over close to 40 different studios and in most cases the games that have been released after said acquisition have been sub-par, but hey even if the game's terrible at least there's no competition now! It makes sense to shut-down a studio after it makes a few bad games, I mean come on it's a waste of money. Hang on a second, did I say a few bad games? Terribly sorry, what I meant to say is that it makes sense to buy a studio that's produced quite a few games, bugger up the development team and rush them into releasing a bad game and then closing it down straight away. To give you an example, Origin Systems was one of the big developers studios of the 80s and 90s and produced classics such as Ultima and Wing Commander. EA decided to grasp this studio with their money hungry claws (ok, they're a company and the whole idea is to make money but just stick with me) and decided to cash in. Ignoring the advice and protests of Ultima's creator Richard Garriott they decided to rush out the release of Ultima VIII and Ultima IX; which if you're a fan of the series will remember how god awful these two games were. It's not just the small studios EA were after, they also decided to buy close to 20% Ubisoft shares in a move that seemed like a hostile takeover; hell even Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot stated that a merger was possible. Thankfully they decided to sell of their share in July 2010, but just imagine if they'd merged or taken over? How terrible would I Am Alive have been if E---how terrible would Assassins's Creed 2 have been if EA had been involved?