Electronic Arts Finally Gives Up Bid for Take-Two Interactive

Those EA people, make me so angry! No baseball games since 2005! What is all that about?!? Good! They can't get their hands on CIV
 
Dirk Knight said:
Although I may be a newb to this forum, I'm very familiar with the way EA operates when it comes to fan based/driven game series. They don't listen or care what the people who buy the games think, they only listen to what their Sales and Marketing division think they can do financially.

Witness how Sim Cities: Societies did in the marketplace. While they did farm the project out to Tilted Mill, the stated goal for SC:Societies was a "simplified" version of the Maxis Sim City 4 franchise using true 3d graphics. The fans of the franchise heatedly protested the grammer school version of their beloved game, and while Tilted Mill did their best to doctor it up, it still failed. Sales of SC:Societies bombed. (i do have hard facts and links to back this up.)

EA has publicly stated that their goal is to make games that appeal to larger markets and will continue to develop versions of their most popular game franchises into simpler, more user-friendly formats that have a broader appeal.

As to losing the AC franchise, while all of the artwork and storyline may be copyrighted, it was still basically a Civilization format with different graphics and storyline. Let EA have it. There are better ways to do it that aren't copyrighted.

If EA eventually gets a hold of T2, expect the same for the Civilization franchise.

Candyland Civ anyone?
Click to expand...

We already have candyland civ its called Civilization Revolution!
 
Let's not forget that Take 2 also makes Grand Theft Auto, One of the Best selling game franchises ever. I'm sure that's what EA really want!!!! So I say this isn't over by a long shot!!!! Hopefully take 2 can make a Contract, that gives EA control of Grand Theft Auto, in exchange for EA leaving other games like the Civilization Series in Control of Take 2.
 
Cube4 said:
Let's not forget that Take 2 also makes Grand Theft Auto, One of the Best selling game franchises ever. I'm sure that's what EA really want!!!! So I say this isn't over by a long shot!!!! Hopefully take 2 can make a Contract, that gives EA control of Grand Theft Auto, in exchange for EA leaving other games like the Civilization Series in Control of Take 2.
Click to expand...

Or EA can take control of Take 2, and Firaxis becomes independent
 
Churchill 25 said:
Or EA can take control of Take 2, and Firaxis becomes independent
Click to expand...

To do that effectively, they would have to hire about 200 more marketing and distribution type people, which would seriously dilute the percentage of people with good game ideas within the company... If they released a wild mountain gorilla into the Firaxis offices and pelted him with pub darts, the results would not be so devestating.
 
I'm glad EA wasn't able to get their greedy hands on Take Two and Firaxis, but it's a little sad when you think that this'll make Alpha Centauri II even more unlikely..

I just finished playing another round of the game and, while still as entertaining as the first time I played it, it is getting rather dated..

Then again, would risking the Civ series really be worth the possibility of a sequel to SMAC? I don't think so. So yeah, overall I'm more glad than I am sad. Let's hope they keep EA at bay for a lot longer!
 
Yeah I think we all agree that it stinks they have alpha centauri but its most unlikely that they would make an ac2 even though they have the rights to it because their only looking for money heck ive been waiting for simcity5.
 
I don't know what EA Games's actions will mean for any of the Firaxis or Sid Meier works. But I am highly displeased what they did to the Sim City franchise, farming it out to a mediocre software company that had little concept of what the game was about or how to implement its play. I'm not going to root for their success until they demonstrate that they care about the fanbase that helped in buying, enjoying, promoting, modding, and making the classic strategy games what they are today. We are the fans they were trying to attract 10+ years ago and I don't appreciate being taken for granted.
 
Dirk Knight said:
Although I may be a newb to this forum, I'm very familiar with the way EA operates when it comes to fan based/driven game series. They don't listen or care what the people who buy the games think, they only listen to what their Sales and Marketing division think they can do financially.

Witness how Sim Cities: Societies did in the marketplace. While they did farm the project out to Tilted Mill, the stated goal for SC:Societies was a "simplified" version of the Maxis Sim City 4 franchise using true 3d graphics. The fans of the franchise heatedly protested the grammer school version of their beloved game, and while Tilted Mill did their best to doctor it up, it still failed. Sales of SC:Societies bombed. (i do have hard facts and links to back this up.)

EA has publicly stated that their goal is to make games that appeal to larger markets and will continue to develop versions of their most popular game franchises into simpler, more user-friendly formats that have a broader appeal.

As to losing the AC franchise, while all of the artwork and storyline may be copyrighted, it was still basically a Civilization format with different graphics and storyline. Let EA have it. There are better ways to do it that aren't copyrighted.

If EA eventually gets a hold of T2, expect the same for the Civilization franchise.

Candyland Civ anyone?
Click to expand...

I still blame EA for what they have done with simcity. They took a great game and thought: We must dumb it down so it appeals to the casual gamer!
They ruined it. Now I have my hopes set on this: http://www.citiesxl.com/

I'm glad the deal didn't go through.
 
I'm also glad that EA's takeover bid failed. Nothing against EA, but their recent track record with SimCity speaks for itself.

Unfortunately, I think it's only a matter of time until Take-Two ends up getting bought out by someone. The only reason this deal didn't happen is because Take-Two was holding out for a higher offer, which they didn't get. The financials for Take-Two have been pretty dismal over the past two years; I think EA is planning on sitting back and waiting for Take-Two to get itself in trouble again, then making another (lower) bid. And I think that's probably likely to happen. :(

Despite the success of Grand Theft Auto, Take-Two is a VERY poorly run company. I should know, since they were technically my employer when I worked briefly with Firaxis.
 
Sullla said:
(..) Take-Two is a VERY poorly run company. I should know, since they were technically my employer when I worked briefly with Firaxis.
Click to expand...

Could you explain/elaborate on that?

I wouldn't mind if Take-Two bought by Activision-Blizzard or Ubisoft (unlikely, because smaller I think)
 
Who ever there brought by hopefully it be someone that cares more about making games instead of making money.But even if 2k does get bought I think that company will be selling civ not making it, that Firaxis job but hopefully by then Firaxis will be it's own company and get to bigger things but still enjoy making games.
 
so 2k just in for the money too.So until they make a deal I wonder how Firaxis is feeling about all this mabye they'll finally be come independent and instead of relying on other companies to publish their games.
 
But I still may be unaware most of you say you don't like EA because you think they only care about money I can believe that but can you explain a little more on how they would ruin Civilization.
 
Thorn said:
Yeah, and the first thing they would do is make sure that Civ: Revolutions WOULD BE the first of console only Civ games while killing the PC version for good. Take a look at EA Sports for the PC. The last baseball version they released for the PC was in 2005. :(
Click to expand...

That's not true. I've got Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 sitting right here. But golf is sort of a different case since we've been getting yearly golf games for a long, long time.
 
Blitzscream said:
But I still may be unaware most of you say you don't like EA because you think they only care about money I can believe that but can you explain a little more on how they would ruin Civilization.
Click to expand...

Sure thing. EA, in the past, has had a track record of simplifying the parts of games that should not be simplified while keeping things that should have been brought up to snuff the same. An example of this would be in C&C3. They dumbed down the gameplay of the C&C series (yeah, tank spam dumbed down) into nothing more than finding a balance between income and tank building while you have your queue of tanks set up to go to the enemy base. Usually this revolved around 3 war factories each autobuilding tanks and you sending them to your opponent. Very rarely did any match revolve around anything other than this.

The same thing happened in Generals but to a lesser extent. Generals was a pretty decent game. It was different, like Civ Rev, but not a drastic change. The first game usually isn't the issue, it's the second and third game that drives a franchise into the ground.

Essentially it's the dumbing down of core game mechanics that drew the initial numbers in that makes the sales numbers and fan base die while not improving upon any aspect of the game.

I'm not talking about dumbing it down a-la Civ Rev. The core of the game is still there. Something EA would do would be to have one civ for each type of tech (culture, science, military, economy) and the have each have their own shorter version of the tree where you would not have to make any decisions, it would auto-choose your techs for you. Instead you would focus primarily on micromanaging workers, units, and cities which would have a very limited number of things to build due to the very rigid nature of the tech tree.

They would 'have' to do this because they would need it to be sold on both on consoles and the PC, and as a result the PC version would have terrible performance and tons of unpatched glitches and balance issues that would remain until the next game came out, which would be the exact same thing but with what a patch should include and some improved graphics... which wouldn't matter because the game would perform terribly anyway.

PC and EA does not get along. Never really has to be honest.

J-man said:
Could you explain/elaborate on that?

I wouldn't mind if Take-Two bought by Activision-Blizzard or Ubisoft (unlikely, because smaller I think)
Click to expand...

Yeah, Activision-Blizzard is part of a mother company - Vivendi. Vivendi owns things like UMG (Universal Music Group) which includes these labels:

Island Def Jam Music Group
Interscope Geffen A&M Records
Lost Highway Records
MCA Nashville
Mercury Nashville
Mercury Records
Polydor
Universal Motown Records Group
Decca
Deutsche Grammophon and Philips
Verve
GRP
Impulse! Records

They happen to own a tiny bit more than a quarter of the music market. In other words, Vivendi is huge and Take-Two is tiny.
 
I see so they would modify it and ruin it for no obvious reason(or ruin it so people would play the console version) and EAs primary focus is consoles.
 
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