January 7, 2008 - Today Electronic Arts announced it has completed the acquisition of both Pandemic and BioWare. The studios will be overseen by Frank Gibeau, President of EA Games. The heads of both developers (Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk of BioWare and Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick of Pandemic) have all been named Vice Presidents of EA.
Fans of both studios have expressed concern over the formerly independent teams joining a corporate behemoth. IGN spoke with Josh Resnick, co-founder and co-general manager of Pandemic, to see if these fears are founded.
IGN: What would you say to fans who are worried about Pandemic losing its independence?
Resnick: The most important thing for us as a studio is our creative independence and maintaining our brand; keeping our momentum going; keeping our culture intact. I gotta say: EA gets it. John [Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts] certainly gets that and they have really remained true to their commitment of allowing us to focus on our products. I hate to put it in these terms but we're kind of having our cake and eating it, too. We still get to remain true to everything that makes us who we are as Pandemic, yet get all the benefits of being in a larger organization that a company like EA offers.
IGN: Will EA be handling your PR and marketing?
Resnick: EA really believes in the 'label model' in terms of building up the resources of the developer. We're putting even more emphasis on our marketing and PR capabilities at a local level at Pandemic. Having said that, EA has some fantastic resources available to us across the whole organization, not just marketing and PR. We're certainly going to leverage that on a worldwide basis.
IGN: What are the biggest perks of the deal for Pandemic?
Resnick: The number one thing I'm excited about is simply focus. I get to focus on making great games. A lot of things that used to be distractions for us -- EA is partnering with us to help out.
Pandemic has always had a history of really treating our talent well and having excellent benefit programs. I realized recently that EA has an astounding benefits program. It has gone beyond what I expected. We get a lot of extra niceties being a part of the EA benefits program that weren't available to us previously as a sole developer.
Basically what they're telling us is, 'Look, here's all the services that we have as part of the EA family – you guys opt in. Pick and choose what you think will strengthen your teams.' So the good message to consumers is, if anything, we're a stronger company now than we were before the transaction.
IGN: Will the acquisition be transparent to the consumer?
Resnick: At the end of the day, their favorite teams are working on the same games. We have a great lineup in store for them -- we've only announced a couple of our products. They should be just as excited as they were beforehand. Now, my hope is I get to reach an even bigger audience and make an even bigger impact than we were able to before
رسمي// EA استولت على Pandemic و BioWare
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