There's nothing sad or negative about that acquisition. Bethesda became a stronger publisher and id will get more resources and the attention their games deserves.

This isnt suprising. High production games are very expensive and yeild a pretty poor ROI. Its kind of like what happened in the N64/PS1 days. CDs were cheaper and easier to produce while carts posed a very risky manufacturing investment and yeilded poor ROIs. In this case HD production with motion capture and overblown CGI budgets = cartridges. Having a flimsy worldwide economy doesnt help either as financing for high budget games is also drying up.

Expect publishers to continue to consolidate studios and many poor souls to lose jobs until the cost of game production is reduced accross the board. And kudos to the many publishers you dont see on that list for finding ways to reduce production costs and increasing ROIs. You may not like the games they make (i'm looking at you Ubisoft...PETZ) but their employees have jobs and can feed their families.

Studios like Free Radical was on the down turn and facing going out of business completely and another studio had to pick them up for them to stay in business, which is why its on the list, they lost their freedom :P

I can't bring myself to cry watching that list, there sure are a lot of names that had it coming up there. All in all, I don't see my gaming life being any poorer in the future.
The layoff's in some of the developers I care about is a tad sad but the financial crisis was bound to take its toll (and it has, despite certain people wanting to blame every shutdown and bankruptcy on evil, shiny graphics) and it truly has in all other parts of all other businesses as well.

If you had actually read my post it says that EA is losing cash yet they still bought Playfish.

Whoa calm down I was adding to what you said, it was more talking to Alterego and making another claim of being bought out as a negative.  Plus if they weren't in a bind to begin with they wouldn't need to be bought out, so that fits in with being a casualty of 2009

You mean Wii Fit plus!

Riddick was great...if you never played the original. I loved it back in 2005 when I played it.

But for those that have played it before, what you got was an upscaled port of the original game, and a new...me too...like short game that wasn't as good. I couldnt even bother to finish the second game...

Have you got any lists like this for previous years?

I feel bad for all the job losses, but I can't help but laugh at all the people who are scratching their heads and wondering where all their money went.