Andromeda alone was the type of game a developer typically doesn't recover from. Now, having released two of the absolute worst AAA games from this entire generation in the space of two years, there is no way back for Bioware. Absolutely none.

I expect what we'll see now is the studio busted down to a skeleton crew to handle content for Anthem (assuming EA even considers it worth keeping online for very long), and the new Dragon Age game either cancelled or farmed out to some no-name studio.

Papa EA already took his adopted child Bioware for a walk outside. He wanted to show him a nice place where most of his adopted childs already went to.

I never said RARE was Microsoft's fault... In-fact they have released some solid titles that I have actually enjoyed, like Kameo... But I think at some point they will get closed down, I feel like over time that their output quality has diminished.

Digital Anvil made Freelancer, which was headed by the same guy who is making StarCitizen and who made Starlancer prior... These are big PC titles, so I wouldn't expect console gamers to have taken much note of any of them.

FASA studios made Mech Commander and Mech Warrior. - Again, PC centric titles... But they also made Crimson Skies and Shadowrun for Xbox... Massive loss.

Press Play made Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and got purchased by Flashbulb Games after Microsoft shuttered them.

I think the end of Bioware as we know it is coming very soon, but not Bioware as a brand, I think EA will insist on keeping it alive. More and more core employees are likely to leave though, we're seeing the same for Blizzard and Activision, employees are jumping ship (when not being axed). They've clearly lost their touch, and they've clearly been taking a decisive turn towards action focus before depth and actual roleplay, multiplayer-like design and more "accessible" gameplay for some time now. This was evident already with Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition. To me, this isn't so much a shock as it is a slow-cook disaster unfolding before my eyes.

Hope no, fear yes. EA looks happy to bet more and more on addictive, but not really good, F2P games, that for anybody that has not enough time to play at regular intervals to use all the possibilities offered daily to earn the premium currency for free (not to mention special events that are even more difficult to win without using almost every free daily ticket), actually become P4W. There are devs and publishers that are even greedier than EA in their F"P policies, but this backfires on them making gamers suddenly wake up, hating them and stop playing their games cold turkey, while EA is more cunning and it found a better balance that has lower risk to make gamers too angry, they surely get angry, but addiction still prevails. Recently though they are getting greedier, and they are cutting more corners on code quality and testing, this could eventually backfire on them.

Not saying you said Rare was destroyed by MS, that was more towards others who would think that. I doubt MS will close Rare. There legacy is too big. Maybe staff cuts possibly depending if there next game does poorly. They are a huge team.

I stopped playing Mech Warrior after the 3rd one. MW2 was published by Activision and the 3rd was published by MS. I felt the series died at MW3. The rights to that IP feel all over the place. MW2 was clearly my favourite and ground breaking at the time to.

I heard of Freelancer, i was never able to get it working on my old PC, so i missed that title. I heard good things about it and i knew the team behind it is responsible for Star Citizen aswell. I had no idea Digital Anvil was even under MS.

PressPlay i didnt even know MS owned them either.

Nope.

As many have already pointed out, Anthem will probably be the end. Like Mass Effect, it will likely do "ok" considering the circumstances (Andromeda sold 7 million. I could see Anthem falling in the 3 to 7 million territory lifetime) but the EA's and Activisions of the world set ludicrous expectations.

Even if it isn't, Bioware's closure is inevitable. Any dev acquired by the serial killer that is EA has no future. The corpses of Visceral and Pandemic are still buried in EA's backyard among the rest.

No, that's EXACTLY what EA is gonna do if and when it flops, it's their M.O. The way things are going, it looks like we can add them to the pile.

R.I.P. BioWare.

I liked Bioware most back when they were making D&D games. Seemed to me like they degraded in quality just a bit even before they were acquired by EA. But yeah, no one destroys a good studio like EA. Just getting bought by EA is basically a death sentence. Really a pity.