This is what happens when you have to many thing on one's plate..

funny to see if Bioware is next to have it's cage door left open..

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Rumor: EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios Down Under

Electronics Arts has shuffled off Pandemic Studios' Brisbane office, a reliable source tells Kotaku. The Australian developer was best known for Destroy All Humans! and its rumored development of an ill-fated Batman game.

According to the information we were provided, Pandemic's Brisbane staffers weren't necessarily laid off by EA corporate, which purchased the developer alongside BioWare in 2007. Instead, we were told that the studio was "set free" with the down under arm of Pandemic retaining its original IP and even its equipment.

"It was more of a 'Find a new publisher. Good luck.' kind of thing," according to the source. And you can keep the tea kettle, apparently. No mention was made of the fate of the other Pandemic Studios office, which is based in Los Angeles.

Pandemic Studios Brisbane was widely rumored to be hard at work on a video game adaptation of 2008's The Dark Knight. That project, while never officially announced, was also said to be canceled. Speaking to a second source familiar with the project late last year, we learned that a lack of direction and an already massive budget may have lead to EA cutting its losses.

According to our source, the allegedly now-closed Brisbane studio was working on an "open world reality show" game called The Next Big Thing for the Wii. It's unclear if the studio will continue to work on that particular project outside of the bounds of EA's ownership.

We're following up with both Electronic Arts and Pandemic Studios Brisbane to get clarification.

Pandemic hasn't had great results this generation thus far. Mercenaries 2 started good but faded fast... And LOTR Conquest's highest score today looks like 7/10.

Bad Results = Studio Closure.

I think it has a tad something to do with EA's ownership.

Make it quick, get it out, patch it later..... if it doesn't sell well... fuck the patch.. we have tons of more games coming out.

So they aren't selling them, they aren't closing them, they are just kicking them out the door and saying "fend for yourself"???

Interesting development, I for one absolutely loved Mercenaries 2. It was an extremely fun game inspite of it's flaws.

Yep

&

Yep

They need to release a good Xbox 360 exclusive. They make good games, they would really benifit from being able to focus on one system so the bugs etc don't overwhelm the great work they do.

Although I feel EA is somewhat to blame, I think that studios have to take blame too...  Publishers usually schedule games to ship based on studio estimates of how long it will take to develop.  If estimates are off the publisher is left trying to decide "ship now" or "ship later" and often they don't get warm and fuzzy answers about timelines for later so they decide to ship now to cut their loses. 

Games are serious business ventures, with real shareholders investing real money.  If you had significant parts of your money in EA you would demand performance.  EA exists to make shareholders money, not to make games.  Making games is simply the business model they chose for making money.

Another victim of HD gaming...

damn bad news, I liked their Star Wars Clone Wars game.

I think this is great news for everyone, really, so long as they can get funds from somewhere. If they can, they are free to make whatever they want without EA breathing down their necks and they don't have to ship until it is ready. Win-win for everybody that way, even EA who will probably still publish for them even though the previous relationship didn't work out.