EA Attempts Hostile Take-Two Takeover

[Muse_Cubed]

EA's biggest franchise "Madden" has been bad for years now. NFL 2K5 was far superior and then unluckily the NFL went with an exclusive franchise. Now that 2K sports are back I am reluctant to see EA buy Take Two and bin their sports games. I'd also like to see Take Two broker a deal for R* to be published by Activision Blizzard and see if EA had anymore interest in Take Two.

Word, I've not enjoyed Madden so much for about 2-3 years because the gameplay's gotten worse. And now that they have the NFL licence there's no real competition which helps nothing.

Tecmo Superbowl all the way

 

[russ0r]

Like Skate? Spore? Army of Two?

Lets face it, its cool to hate EA at the moment, they're games of late have been very good. Even FIFA this year was a substantial improvement, far far better than Pro Evo.

Spore is designed and written by Maxis, not EA.
Skate and Army of Two I'll give you... Not franchises. I wouldn't bother buying them though, they don't look anything special?

I don't hate EA. I just don't think their games are anything to write home about.

 

[Shamikebab]

Spore is designed and written by Maxis, not EA.
Skate and Army of Two I'll give you... Not franchises. I wouldn't bother buying them though, they don't look anything special?

I don't hate EA. I just don't think their games are anything to write home about.

They're produced by EA though, which I believe would a similarish arrangement to that they are planning with Rockstar.

 

[dbmzk1]

Spore is designed and written by Maxis, not EA.
Skate and Army of Two I'll give you... Not franchises. I wouldn't bother buying them though, they don't look anything special?

I don't hate EA. I just don't think their games are anything to write home about.

Spore, Skate and Army of Two are all designed, written, developed and published by EA.

 

[knowledge123]

Spore is designed and written by Maxis, not EA.

Correct.

Spore is a multi-platform god game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multicellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.

linky

Spore, Skate and Army of Two are all designed, written, developed and published by EA.

 

[willhub]

Spore sounds very impressive, nothing EA could do

 

[Ezyryder]

What a bunch of 'noobs'.

From Wikipedia ...
"Electronic Arts (EA) completed its acquisition of Maxis on July 28, 1997"

 

[willhub]

noobs is a stupid word and should be banned from these forums.

And I'm not saying that the quote from wiki is wrong, but dont rely on wiki, its never always right.

 

[NuclearWinter]

*yawn* When's the EA hating going to stop?

When they stop trying to destroy all remaining competition in the sports gaming market. Hint: 2KSports (Take Two) is EA's biggest rival in the sports genre.

I can't think of a franchise EA have ruined in a long time.

I'm not exactly hopeful about the direction the Battlefield series is going since EA bought DICE: Battlefield Heroes. Too early to really speculate though.

However I will agree that EA have been getting much better in the past couple of years.

 

[scorza]

what the hell is all your problems, EA are a business, and the SOLE purpose of business is to make money, your all stupid if you think otherwise... EA are doing nothing wrong by wanting to expand there already large share of the market, intel have been doing it for years yet i hear no complaining about them, infact most people praise intel

and us customers are doing nothing wrong by expressing our unease at this proposed hostile takeover. Just because they're a business it doesn't mean we have to agree with what they're doing I still kinda hope that EA are in fact doing something wrong and the US version of the monopolies and mergers committee will block this, but with the Bush regime being as "business friendly"/corporatist as it is, I doubt it.

FYI a lot of people have complained about Intel's dominance in the past.

 

[randal]

There's a difference between dominance through superior products, and dominance through borging the competition.

Microsoft are renowned for doing this, and it appears EA have a very similar business model. Sooner or later we're going to be left with two developers, EA are going to get their wish of just one unified gaming platform and we the consumer are gonna be **** out of luck.

I'm just worried about Bioshock 2 now, wah.

 

[Bloodshot]

Correct.
linky

As already mentioned - Maxis are EA. EA are Maxis - the two are the same.

Everyone has mentioned some average games that EA have done this year, but EVERY PUBLISHER has released "average" games this year. You guys just don't understand how it works, which is understandable.

Whatever the case, there is nothing anyone can do about it other than the Take-Two shareholders, so we'll just see what happens.

 

[Ezyryder]

noobs is a stupid word and should be banned from these forums.

And I'm not saying that the quote from wiki is wrong, but dont rely on wiki, its never always right.

Don't get all hunched up mate, it was just that it was very easy to find. (one google search!)

Anyway, it is right, go to the Maxis website and you will be able to see it for yourself.

 

[Durzel]

EA has high production values, I don't think I've been disappointed in terms of presentation quality by anything they've done. Historically though it seems that stuff that EA is involved with either ends up being rushed to release and/or abandoned (with game-breaking bugs/exploits) in favour of a whole new game.... Battlefield, etc springs to mind.

I'd hate for them to take over T2 and then find out that the PC version of GTA:IV is canned, or that the multiplayer that has been promised since early on "is due in a later patch" (i.e. canned)

 

[nikebee]

To be fair, the EA bashing is just the in thing to do. It's become cool to bash EA.

I quite like a lot of their games, and couldn't give a rats bottom if they release a new version of FIFA every year much like Konami release PES every year, THQ do Smackdown etc...

They're releasing games, a lot of people buy them, a lot of people love the games and are willing to shell out for them every year. They're obviously doing something right.

Fifa this year is very good, and Skate was phenomenally good and a refreshingly original game compared to the THPS series.

I do understand where some of the bashing comes from... especially the lack of support they offer from some games... but it does get tedious.

Oh and for whomever is trying to say EA don't own Maxis... Wiki is correct, they bought them about 10 years ago. Heck you've only got to look at The Sims to see all the EA logo's plastered all over it, the fact that The Sims site is hosted on the ea.com domain yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Durzel]

To be fair, the EA bashing is just the in thing to do. It's become cool to bash EA.

Why is it fashionable though? There is some foundation to it even if some of the comments are just knee-jerk.

EA - like it or not - HAS got a reputation for abandoning games in favour of radical redevelopment (e.g. whole new games that you have to pay for). The earlier Command & Conquers are still played but reading the forums plenty of people are deeply unhappy that there are still exploits out there unpatched which renders the game all but broken for online play. Battlefield 2 was a great game, abandoned quite early on in favour of 2142, and still has a number of existing game-breaking exploits.

If you're a fan of those games and you've paid good money for them you can hardly blame people for being angry at EA, especially when the games in question either only work multiplayer (BF) or have a trivially easy or otherwise afterthought single-player (e.g. C&C)

I don't really blame EA for wanting to make money and they certainly know their market well. I have to wonder though if EA were at the reigns of say Team Fortress 2 instead of Valve, would we have as many patches or promises of future content or would they have released it and immediately started work on TF3?....

 

[nikebee]

It's not so much people against the lack of support for games by EA that I'm against.

In the past I'm sure I've spent many an angry night on here and other forums moaning that EA have all but stopped support for very popular games simply because a new version has been released. Many other companies out there do the same, but you really would expect a company the size of EA's to handle this a little better.

What I'm more annoyed about is when people bash EA simply for the fact that all they do is release the same games each year with a different number on the end of them. Be it 1,2,3 or 07,08,09... When loads of other companies do the very same thing and get very little abuse for doing so.

Heck you've only got to take a glance at the console markets charts to see how popular rereleases are! Like I said before, THQ release Smackdown each year, you're never too far away from Rockstar's next GTA game, Nintendo will always have Mario appearing in at least 40 games every year.

A relevant example PC wise would be Football Manager. SEGA and SI release the same game each year with an updated GUI, updated rosters, and a few new features implemented. EA release their FIFA,NBA,Madden,NHL (etc) franchises with an updated GUI, updated rosters and one or two features in there... but people slate EA for releasing "the same old crap" each year.

What annoys me too, is the fact that many people aren't willing to give EA games a chance simply because it has EA in the title. I appreciate that when you're spoon-fed mediocre games from a company for so long and all you hear from the gaming community is negativity it's very easy to do this... but for God's sake at least form your own opinion.

The amount of people that were hesitant of FIFA this year despite many die hard PES fans eventually saying that it's better than PES this year is ridiculous!

I'm sure there were a few people a little reserved about Skate until many people said this simply is the best skateboarding game that's been released in a long while.

Sometimes I wish people would stop taking notice of franchises and at least play a demo enough to form their own opinions of games before immediately slating a game because it's come from EA's long franchise of games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no EA fanboy and I know they've released their fairshare of crap in the game history and their online support and login system is a joke, their support for games once they've been out over two weeks is possibly the worst in the games industry... it just gets my goat when people jump on bandwagons for the fun of it...

Now I've got my goat... I'll get my coat too.

Sorry for going off on a bit of a rant there

 

[MumboJumbo]

*yawn* When's the EA hating going to stop? Almost as bad as the Star Wars Galaxies players who can't get over hating SOE.

I can't think of a franchise EA have ruined in a long time. Actually, let's list some cool EA games that came out recently:

Skate
Crysis
Fifa08
Burnout Paradise
Rock Band
The Orange Box

The list goes on, take your EA hating elsewhere, it's getting quite old.

MMM how many games? MM now how about every other game they destroyed?

Crysis? That was rushed and terribly made. Sorry but it wouldn't suprise me if EA got it rushed out to beat the sales of other games. Its terribly optimized and far to short.

The organge box, o yes they bought that to consol and it barely works on PS3.

Burn out- generic crap. They are the same thing over and over again.
Fifa- same as above.

Skate and rock band ive not even heard but cant say they sound amazing.

 

[nikebee]

MMM how many games? MM now how about every other game they destroyed?

Crysis? That was rushed and terribly made. Sorry but it wouldn't suprise me if EA got it rushed out to beat the sales of other games. Its terribly optimized and far to short.

The organge box, o yes they bought that to consol and it barely works on PS3.

Burn out- generic crap. They are the same thing over and over again.
Fifa- same as above.

Skate and rock band ive not even heard but cant say they sound amazing.

Not played Burnout personally, but FIFA is entirely different this year to years gone by.

It was an entirely new engine for the 360 last year, and it's very much a complete rewrite for Fifa08. It's worlds apart from previous years.

Surely the whole Orange Box thing would be Valve, as others were quick to point out that Valve are the major contributers and EA have nothing more to do with it other than slapping an EA logo on it, when somebody pointed out EA made a good set of games... You can't now blame EA when this game goes bad.

Rock Band, I'm not 100% sure but I think EA just slap their logo on this.

Didn't Rock Band come about from the Red Octane and Harmonix split?

One went with Activision and the other EA.