RSSEA Buys Online Game Firm Mythic
By the Betanews Staff | Published June 20, 2006, 10:13 PM
Electronic Arts said Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to acquire Mythic Entertainment, maker of the massively multiplayer online game "Dark Age of Camelot." The deal is expected to boost EA's reach in the rapidly expanding MMORPG market. Terms were not disclosed.
EA said that Vivendi's "World of Warcraft," which boasts almost 6 million users, has proven that MMORPG's aren't just a niche market. The company will form a game development studio where Mythic is based, with the new company called EA Mythic. The studio is currently developing a new game title dubbed "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning."
EA STRIKES AGAIN!!! BWAHAHAH!
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Another one bites the dust, just like Westwood.
Which still pisses me off.
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This company is really trying to dominate the whole gaming market. Consider how much money they make for every title they realease
- Josh
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Yeah, but what you need to know is that a game title costs 50 bucks, but EA only get's about 10 dollars or less out of that. The rest of that pays license fees, promotions, and advertising. EA makes a lot of money, they have good titles and most of them are sports related, but EVERY gaming company makes money from their titles, they don't have much overhead. A company like EA is quite large, but smaller gaming companies only have a small staff of people, which is why you don't hear about their games as much. They probably make more profit from each title.
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Is EA to become the next Microsoft ?
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hell no, "I don't know where you get your delusions from laser brain" - Princess Leia (Star Wars)
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the gaming industry is the largest sector in the computer world, EVERYONE that makes a game of decent quality makes tons of money.
Even if they sell 100,000 copies, the average computer gaming coming employs just a few people, so if you do the math, they are all wealthy after just a couple of titles..
EA is the most popular, because they have a lock on sports games, Football for one, they have an exclusive deal with the NFL. EA makes real good software. There are too many competitors in the gaming world to compete with a niche software developer like Microsoft.
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Rijp, I suggest you "do the math". 100,000 copies isn't going to make most game companies money. For example (because I happen to have these numbers handy), in 1997 Origin/EA made Wing Commander 4, which had a production cost of over 10 million. Assuming they get $10 for every copy (minus license fees, packaging, taxes, CD/DVD production, manual printing, etc), they would need to sell a million copies just to break even.
That was in 1997, I'm sure todays games put those to shame. BTW, isn't origin out of business? They sure made a lot of games, from Ultima(s), Ultima Underground(s), Wing Commander(s). They all sold WAY over 100,000 copies each, wonder why they went backrupt if they were making so much money.
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Pffft, not from what I hear. I heard EA slave drives their employees and they get paid same ol' same ol' (which is fairly decent as a programmer/designer).
And EA is popular from their football titles after throwing around money to shut out quality competitors like Sega Sports which happens to be an excellent developing branch.
And does EA themselves make great software? EA is just a name. The companies they acquire and the development teams behind THOSE companies make great software, not EA. EA just puts in a brand name, and EAifies them. Which is basically make them tasteless and void of character. (Example: See Madden 2006 and look at the players faces) You want to know who makes great software? Ubisoft, they're hardcore and i'll be damned if I see EA try to acquire them (which they tried to do last year).
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Wing Commander 10 million? Holy s***. Final Fantasy VII was a multimillion dollar project which i'm sure didn't cost 10 million, but they sold 5-6 million copies at a $50 price tag.
Now Square-Enix is the biggest RPG distributor in the world. Strange how game companies work.
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