Spotted this over at Broken Toys just now.  The source material can be found here. 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp. — the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. This acquisition gives EA a strong competitive position in key genres in interactive entertainment: action, adventure and role-playing games. The two studios have been recognized for creating some of the highest-quality games in the industry.

BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios have ten franchises under development, including six wholly owned games. BioWare Corp. is currently developing the highly anticipated Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios is redefining open-world games with its upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ and Saboteur™, in addition to several unannounced projects.

Just….wow.  Didn’t see this coming at all.  I love Bioware, so I just hope that getting acquired by EA doesn’t muck up things.  I can only hope that this means better games and leveraging talent and assets to create top notch MMOs.  Time will tell.  Add this to the “2007 has been an interesting year for MMOs” list.

EDIT - an update from GameDaily

Following the announcement, execs from the respective companies held a conference call, and EA confirmed that of the ten franchises, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Mercenaries, Saboteur, and Neverwinter Nights were definitely included in the deal. And while Microsoft is publishing Mass Effect exclusively on Xbox 360 this holiday, the future of Mass Effect lies in EA’s hands; as such it wouldn’t be surprising to see the highly anticipated franchise end up on PS3 or other platforms as well. EA also noted that the highly touted dialog engine created for Mass Effect could be put to use in other titles. GameDaily BIZ contacted Microsoft for comment on Mass Effect but the company declined to comment.

Another interesting point from a business standpoint is that Riccitiello, the former head of Elevation Partners prior to rejoining EA, admitted that he had a residual interest in the company. Because of this conflict of interest EA deliberately had an independent board supervise the takeover of BioWare/Pandemic. EA also said that they expect to break even on the investment by 2009 and they expect to start making money on the deal by 2010.

The games from BioWare/Pandemic will likely be spread out over several years through 2011, EA said. In addition, both BioWare and Pandemic have a number of games planned for Nintendo’s Wii and DS.

And even more interesting stuff from Joystiq:

Says EA CEO John Riccitiello, “We bring a lot to the table … we simplify the process of courting publishers, basically taking it to zero.” He adds that EA, being the publishing giant that it is, can “reach places where [BioWare and Pandemic] don’t get to so we can build their properties bigger.” As for what EA itself gets out of the deal, the exec noted matter of factly that EA is “not in the open world action-adventure business. These guys are the leaders … this strengthens us where we need to be stronger.”

Added EA CFO Warren Jenson, “We are getting a very well cost managed developer into the organization.”

Of course, much of the worry over the purchase resides in the feeling that these two specialized devs would suffer by being absorbed into some kind of homogeneous blob; however, according to EA, the reality will be “quite the opposite.”

“Both of these are strong studios with rich cultures,” said Riccitiello. “Inside our label structure they will maintain their autonomy … and will reap the benefits of EA’s scale and structure.” He clarified that EA will also be able to “better monetize” titles from both studios, while allowing them to be “treated separately.”

Finally, in looking to the future, EA notes that it plans to release 10 titles from the studios “fairly evenly” over the next 4 years, with BioWare’s highly secretive MMO project getting a release “more towards the back end” of this schedule, most likely in 2011.

O.k.  So this last piece from Joystiq makes it sound a lot better, so I can only hope this holds true.  Seems that EA is looking to strengthen it’s line up with proven leaders, and companies that are already well run.  Sounds like they are hoping to leverage their size, scope and marketing to get titles out to a larger audience and monetize those products in a larger way.  Although for Bioware, they have enough name brand recognition in the gaming world that I’m not sure how much more EA can do there.  Anything Bioware produces is already fairly well known, marketed well and bought instantly by tons of gamers.

On the Bioware MMO - sure I can wait til 2011.  Heck, by 2011 who knows what the landscape will look like if 2007 is indicative of years to come.  I’m just glad to know that it’s still on the table and not being canceled at this point.  I hope it remains a priority for the studio.

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