Electronic Arts now looking for a buyer. Apple interested?

[Obioban]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

I will pay three-fiddy...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

and then shut the hellhole down

 

 

 

The last good game EA made was over 20 years ago...

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor_(1999_video_game)

 

C&C remastered is amazing. 100% perfect.

[hishnash]

11 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Consolidation of the gaming industry like this absolutely SUCKS.

Seems like this is a feedback cycle destroying the gaming industry as we loved it.

Firstly apple does not own any other game studios so them acquiring EA would not contribute to the consideration that is happening.

The cycle of consolidation is what is needed to create space for new talent to start up small games studios that unless the boemuths can explore new ideas and concepts, the successful ones of these then grown and over time are consolidated and new small indie dev houses appear... its a positive cycle yes its sad to see the brands we love can trust (not EA) be consumed and vanish but thats important in the long term picture. 

[ToboRobot]

38 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Firstly apple does not own any other game studios so them acquiring EA would not contribute to the consideration that is happening.

The cycle of consolidation is what is needed to create space for new talent to start up small games studios that unless the boemuths can explore new ideas and concepts, the successful ones of these then grown and over time are consolidated and new small indie dev houses appear... its a positive cycle yes its sad to see the brands we love can trust (not EA) be consumed and vanish but thats important in the long term picture. 

Consolidation of independent developers into massive publishers has not led to the growth of indie and small studios as you suggest.

They have raised the bar of entry to make it prohibitively difficult for the little guy to exist.  

Rather than having these mega publishers continue to consolidate into the big tech firms, the correct decision is to divest developers from publishers, and decentralize the industry.

The thing killing the industry won't suddenly save it, if you do it just a little bit more and finally poison it to health.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, ToboRobot said:

Consolidation of independent developers into massive publishers has not led to the growth of indie and small studios as you suggest.

They have raised the bar of entry to make it prohibitively difficult for the little guy to exist.  

Rather than having these mega publishers continue to consolidate into the big tech firms, the correct decision is to divest developers from publishers, and decentralize the industry.

The thing killing the industry won't suddenly save it, if you do it just a little bit more and finally poison it to health.

The thing that creates small indie games is the fact that there are Artis and game devs out there that do not want to work at these supper sized corporate hell holes. That is why the consolidation creates these indie game companies.  Yes its not overnight but it is happening there are many many indie devs out there publishing games, and its not easy to make money this way but its possible of course these Indies are not making AAA or massive online mutliplayer games but these games are never going to try out new concepts in gaming they will always be play it safe concepts. 

[Commodus]

I wouldn’t rule out Apple acquiring EA, but it would require a huge pivot for both companies… so I wouldn’t count on it.

 

Apple would likely insist on iOS/macOS versions of most or all games, and would put at least some into Apple Arcade. EA would be discouraged from leaning as much on microtransactions and DLC as it has. I could see Apple cutting a significant number of projects, too. Not because it’d be afraid of violent or risqué content, but because it might be too tough to shoehorn them into Apple’s strategy.

I don’t know that Apple would straight up cancel games for other platforms if this happened, but I wouldn’t count on Xbox versions for long…

 

[hishnash]

4 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I wouldn’t rule out Apple acquiring EA, but it would require a huge pivot for both companies… so I wouldn’t count on it.

 

Don't see why it would really change things for apple at all. Selling / making software for thier hardware so as to increase the hardware value is apples bread and butter.
 

5 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Apple would likely insist on iOS/macOS versions of most or all games, and would put at least some into Apple Arcade.

I would expect all future games to be in Apple Arcade. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I could see Apple cutting a significant number of projects, too. Not because it’d be afraid of violent or risqué content, but because it might be too tough to shoehorn them into Apple’s strategy.

 

I agree they would cut lots but I think the main reason is apple does not like to have to many projects on the go. I expect they would make it be about the same as TV+ so 5 to 10 releases a year and prefure to have good releases rather than volume. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I don’t know that Apple would straight up cancel games for other platforms if this happened, but I wouldn’t count on Xbox versions for long…

 

I think apple would cancel any new releases on other platforms (apart form maybe Nintendo/soney who they might want to keep in the good books).  Existing titles they will be happy to just continue to sell its not like EA are well known for providing bug fixes etc down the road. They might remove a lot of the micro transition bits from existing paid games through before leaving them to sit and rot. 

[Mark Kaine]

9 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

I am old enough to remember EA and Activision growing to become evil empires.  

But I still feel like they occasionally managed to not F*** up good games, like Titanfall.  

I agree they generally pump out repetitive titles and lots of crap, but there are a few gems.

 

8 hours ago, Obioban said:

C&C remastered is amazing. 100% perfect.

i mean i knew that would be controversial but in a way i think its true, around 2000 they started to turn into trash with their yearly franchises and whatnot... doesn't mean they immediately stopped making games that were enjoyable,  I liked the NFS games ..  up to Carbon for example,  but even there you could tell its going downhill (and it did)

 

Also a remaster?  doesn't count . : p

[Kronoton]

8 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Consolidation of independent developers into massive publishers has not led to the growth of indie and small studios as you suggest.

They have raised the bar of entry to make it prohibitively difficult for the little guy to exist.  

 

"They" ??

 

The times were you could make a proper game without 8 or 9 figure funding are long gone, so if you want to stay outside the publishers you would either need to to raise venture capital (good luck with that) or be restricted to "casual" gaming with limited visual.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Kronoton said:

The times were you could make a proper game without 8 or 9 figure funding are long gone, so if you want to stay outside the publishers you would either need to to raise venture capital (good luck with that) or be restricted to "casual" gaming with limited visual.

I think our definition of proper game is very different. There are games that have been made by a single dev/artist that I have put as much time into as AAA games with 9 figure funding.  Most of these 8 to 9 figure funding games are so predictable that once you have played 4 of them the new `fun` ness that they provide is lost, that is why we need these smaller players who are trying new things (or even brining back old things) that are fun... what makes a game a game is you being entertained this does not require 9 figures and many games with much smaller budgets are much much more entertaining that the majority of the 9 figure garbage that is reproduced every year. (yes there are some 9 figure games each years that are worth it but most are a complete wast of space and talent). 

[Kronoton]

10 minutes ago, hishnash said:

I think our definition of proper game is very different. There are games that have been made by a single dev/artist that I have put as much time into as AAA games with 9 figure funding.

 

Yep, and there 10000 of these ready for download on your phone and another 10000 will come even if all the big studios get sucked into 1 mega-studio. Finding the gems in the trash is and will be the issue but I just don't see why it would matter wether big studios are organised at $1.000.000.000 each or in a few $100.000.000.000 groups.

[hishnash]

6 minutes ago, Kronoton said:

 

Yep, and there 10000 of these ready for download on your phone and another 10000 will come even if all the big studios get sucked into 1 mega-studio. Finding the gems in the trash is and will be the issue but I just don't see why it would matter wether big studios are organised at $1.000.000.000 each or in a few $100.000.000.000 groups.

The larger the studios become by merging the more indie games and new novel games will be given room.

As the bigger a supper studio becomes the less interested it is in creating new novel content and the more is entire pathway is dictated by following the formulae. This also leads to a lot of skilled creatives leaving were if the studios are mid sized they might stay but once they become supper massive monolith they leave and start up new indie studios. And the cycle starts again... some of these indie companies will hit gold and grow.. as this happens most of the old supper monoliths will die out and given time we will have new large studios that will then merge and die out and it will all repeat... 

[Sauron]

Disney would be the obvious candidate since EA has been publishing Star Wars games for them.

[ToboRobot]

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

The thing that creates small indie games is the fact that there are Artis and game devs out there that do not want to work at these supper sized corporate hell holes. That is why the consolidation creates these indie game companies.  Yes its not overnight but it is happening there are many many indie devs out there publishing games, and its not easy to make money this way but its possible of course these Indies are not making AAA or massive online mutliplayer games but these games are never going to try out new concepts in gaming they will always be play it safe concepts. 

I think the history of the peak of gaming detailed in books like Masters of Doom, would disagree with your view.

The thing that creates small indies games, is small indie developers.  Consolidation does the oppose of creating indie dev studios.  Yes, some indie studios form studio gets bought by a publisher, but you are also losing a independent studio.

When id was acquired by Bethesda, did multiple indie studios spring up?  

[hishnash]

13 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Yes, some indie studios form studio gets bought by a publisher, but you are also losing a independent studio.

When id was acquired by Bethesda, did multiple indie studios spring up?  

we have already gone way begone the ID being acquired by Bethesda..  At the moment we are looking at the consolidation of entireties that are no longer considered Indie. 

there is a difference between ZeniMax being argued by MS and ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) acquiring ID. 

[ToboRobot]

49 minutes ago, hishnash said:

we have already gone way begone the ID being acquired by Bethesda..  At the moment we are looking at the consolidation of entireties that are no longer considered Indie. 

there is a difference between ZeniMax being argued by MS and ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) acquiring ID. 

When ZeniMax (publisher) bought id, that consolidation of an independent game developer into a large publishers portfolio of game developers, did not result in a growth of indie game devs as you have suggested.

[Commodus]

11 hours ago, hishnash said:

Don't see why it would really change things for apple at all. Selling / making software for thier hardware so as to increase the hardware value is apples bread and butter.

There are a couple of reasons. For Apple, gaming has never really been a high priority. The iPhone and Apple Arcade gave the company a reason to care, but the most you really see on a daily basis is Apple plugging the latest game (like Apex Legends Mobile). It would now have to support gaming in a big way not just on mobile, but on consoles and, quite likely, the Mac. And it would definitely have to be careful about dropping support for platforms to both appease regulators and keep much of EA's revenue coming in.

 

12 hours ago, hishnash said:

I would expect all future games to be in Apple Arcade. 

That's a very real possibility, but I could also see Apple reserving some games as full purchases for a while. The safer bet is that Apple would eliminate most or all paid DLC, at least for Arcade subscribers.

[hishnash]

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

And it would definitely have to be careful about dropping support for platforms to both appease regulators and keep much of EA's revenue coming in.

apple is not going to pull existing games from other platforms but given apple does not yet make games I don't see any regulator saying apple buying EA and no longer making new games as an issue.  Non of the regulators are saying apple must make Final Cut Pro for other platforms so why would they say that about games. The regulators are upset about apple not providing access to their hardware to other devs not about apple not providing access to their software for people who don't want to pay them for the hardware. 

 

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

That's a very real possibility, but I could also see Apple reserving some games as full purchases for a while.

I think apple will see the added value of having it in arcade as much more worth wile than the sales they would get from direct sales. Just the same as MS is going to be putting all new titles into game pass.  

[Blademaster91]

23 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Consolidation of independent developers into massive publishers has not led to the growth of indie and small studios as you suggest.

They have raised the bar of entry to make it prohibitively difficult for the little guy to exist.  

Rather than having these mega publishers continue to consolidate into the big tech firms, the correct decision is to divest developers from publishers, and decentralize the industry.

The thing killing the industry won't suddenly save it, if you do it just a little bit more and finally poison it to health.

The consolidation of smaller or indie developers is something EA has done quite a few times, and they've completely changed the studios they've bought or killed them off after ruining them.

The mega corporation publishers purchasing other studios means less competition in the gaming industry, less of a chance of smaller studios making successful titles, and less choice as a consumer.

I would like to see EA stop with the anti-consumer microtransactions, and pushing buggy unfinished games as what EA calls a live service, Battlefield 2042 is a very good example of it.  I don't see the point of why Apple would want to buy EA, they would completely change the studio into making mac and ios titles, and probably drop any titles EA currently has, when Apple could simply put more money into Apple Arcade and make their own game titles.

[hishnash]

15 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I don't see the point of why Apple would want to buy EA, they would completely change the studio into making mac and ios titles, and probably drop any titles EA currently has, when Apple could simply put more money into Apple Arcade and make their own game titles.

I think apple would mostly pivot to them making AR/VR titles out of their existing IP.  This is the future platform apple has already spent billions on, buying EA (likely very cheap for the talent and IP it has once you get rid of the crap management) is worth it. 

Yes apple would not publish any new games for other platforms unless they wanted to get something from that platform, eg I could see them publish things on the Switch if that gets one or more Nintendo exclusives on apple platforms or even publish things on the steam dec (yes native linux) if that gets Valve to do something they want (the gaming industry is full of these types of deals). 

 

But the main use case of these artists and devs and IP would be for future Apple Arcade games, having this big pool of talent they can direct to put into arcade (in particular AR/VR) would really boost its appeal and thus increase its adoption by users that will also attract other devs.   Buying EA will not cost them that much if it will give them the content they need to make the AR/VR platform grow, it might also give them a game engine that they can adapt for their platforms and then publish to let devs use to counteract the risk of the monopoly Unreal has right now and thus the power Epic have to destroy apples plans to build an AR/VR platform. 

[Video Beagle]

9 hours ago, hishnash said:

Yes apple would not publish any new games for other platforms unless they wanted to get something from that platform,

I'd think seeing it as a way to push METAL as a viable...whatever METAL actually is...would be a goal in and of itself....not to mention stuff like money...Sims 5 will be a money maker, no point not getting money from XBox and Playstation people.

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I'd think seeing it as a way to push METAL as a viable...whatever METAL actually is...

Metal basically a mix of CUDA and VK (it predates VK). It's a C++ Compute & Display shading language and a low level API to talk to your gpu.  But not at all relevant if apple want to ship apps on other platforms as non of those other platforms have metal drivers for their GPUs.

Apple could also sell Final Cut Pro on PC and make lots of money from selling it but this is the key thing to remember at apple unlike many companies individual departments do not need to show a direct RIO.  

 

Entire teams can spend billions just in the name of making products that other teams develop and ship sell better, even if they cant put an exact figure on how much better.

 

 

This would apply to EA if purchased by Apple as well.

 

Individual games would no longer be expected to be able to show a return on investment.  (this could mean some much more creative directions if these people are still at EA and have not already jumped ship)

 

So why would they bother with other platforms when no-one at apple would want it and non of the performance metrics (and bonuses) of the people working on the game are at all related to sales of that game but rather are related to apples perfomance overall.

 

However much they might make from selling Sims5 on Xbox of Playstation that is a rounding error compared to the money apple makes every day. 

If they can increate the chances someone buys an apple hardware product by just 0.1% they would make more money for apple long term than selling on PC, Xbox and Playstation and by not bothering with these platforms there is a lot more time for devs to focus or to release sooner.  And apple having a load of loved gaming IP that is excessive to thier platforms would really move the needle more than 0.1% in many markets. 

[Supreme Calamitas]

Apple is probably interested because they want more games on Mac os, and because EA probably makes big money 

 

But I don't think apple would like to associate themselves with a brand like EA, also FIFA and Apple just don't mix properly in my mind.

[Commodus]

45 minutes ago, Marko1600 said:

Apple is probably interested because they want more games on Mac os, and because EA probably makes big money 

 

But I don't think apple would like to associate themselves with a brand like EA, also FIFA and Apple just don't mix properly in my mind.

If Apple is interested (this is just a rumor, remember), the Mac would only be part of it. This would be more about bolstering iPhone/iPad gaming, with the Mac as a bonus.

 

And I don't think Apple would be concerned about EA brand association, since that only matters to a subset of gamers; don't confuse the hardcore gaming crowd with the population at large. Besides, a few years ago people wouldn't have associated Apple with TV shows, let alone ones with sex and violence.

[hishnash]

14 hours ago, Commodus said:

And I don't think Apple would be concerned about EA brand association, since that only matters to a subset of gamers; don't confuse the hardcore gaming crowd with the population at large. Besides, a few years ago people wouldn't have associated Apple with TV shows, let alone ones with sex and violence.

Apple would not be concerned about EA branding as I expect if they were to buy them they would devolve all the leadership and likly devolve the EA brand completely and put it all under Apple Studios or something like this.

[Kisai]

24 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Apple would not be concerned about EA branding as I expect if they were to buy them they would devolve all the leadership and likly devolve the EA brand completely and put it all under Apple Studios or something like this.

Just based on experience, it seems like the "EA" brand, like the "Origin" brand might be kept around for a specific subset of games (eg EA Sports, that gets published to consoles) but everything else that gets published to Arcade would be Apple, or maybe some better sounding brand.