The Rise and Fall of Command & Conquer

[Chazore]

sethnintendo said:

Chazore said:

Basically a publisher buying out someone who proved what they could already do and manage with. The only pros in that documentary, were the increase in budget, but that was all set back by the rushed releases and constant shift in changing the franchise into something else. 

It's not just EA that does this, the same has happened with all sorts of publishers out there. I'd rather a dev team obtain the franchise and work on it themselves, maybe use a publisher just for getting it out there, but refusing any sort of buyout. 

Yea the EA buyouts never really work out of them in the long run.  Sure the franchises might have some continued success but just look at the EA graveyard.  Westwood, Bullfrog, Criterion, Maxis (I'm counting Maxis and Criterion dead because they pretty much are)

http://kotaku.com/an-updated-list-of-studios-ea-has-bought-and-then-shut-1689498614

SimCity was a great franchise but they seemed to have ran that into the ground not helping with their always online DRM with the last iteration.  Seems like Cities: Skylines is now the new SimCity.

 

Just found a pretty nice quote from an old article.

"I think our history with acquisitions is somewhat marginal in performance," Jorgensen said when asked if EA has identified any acquisition targets in the industry. "We have some that are spectacular, and some that didn't do so well. It's a headcount business, right? You're buying headcount, and that's always difficult to manage in acquisitions. It doesn't mean we won't do them, but I think where we've been most successful is in smaller acquisitions that we've integrated very quickly."

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141205/05574329334/ea-admits-that-gobbling-up-talented-studios-then-ruining-them-isnt-working-out-so-well.shtml

EA has basically killed numerous studios, especially those based on PC. I think they just wanted what was popular on PC at the time, bring it to consoleas and butcher what remained of the IP's they bought up. Most of thise IP's and studios that were working on PC ended up shifting to consoles, then back to PC, but not before screwing them up and letting them die. 

That quote at the end was a nice follow up, and it shows that they just sought to buy to see if it would print them more money, rather than actually caring for what they were even buying in the first place (Sim City 2013 made that loud and clear).