BioWare and Microsoft on Mass Effect's future

360 News | Publisher 'committed'; developer 'love the 360' but will 'see what happens'.

As reported by PALGN, Electronic Arts recently announced their acquisition of games developer BioWare Corp. Under the terms of the deal, EA will obtain the rights to BioWare's science fiction action-RPG Mass Effect, which is set to be published by Microsoft Game Studios this holiday season.

BioWare reiterated on numerous occasions that Mass Effect would be a trilogy of Xbox 360 exclusives. In light of the recent news though, any future release of sequels seemed unclear. However, according to TeamXbox, Microsoft has just provided an update on the situation:

'Microsoft has not yet announced specifics regarding sequels to Mass Effect but we'll be talking to EA and BioWare in the weeks to come. Mass Effect is the most anticipated role-playing game of the season, on any platform, and we are committed to the franchise’s long term success.'

Further, in an interview with GameSpot about EA's buyout, BioWare Co-founders and Co-CEOs, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeshcuk said, 'Microsoft is a great partner, a great publishing partner, and we're really excited to work with them. And we love the 360. One of the things we've talked about is getting multiple iterations of this franchise out during its lifetime, since it's such a great system to work with. And we see Microsoft as a long-term partner on Mass Effect.

'We can't predict the future. We'll see what happens. The key thing is we're making a trilogy of Mass Effect games, and we've got a great story arc'.

Whereas Microsoft holds the intellectual property rights to games such as Halo and Project Gotham Racing, Mass Effect is owned by BioWare Corp. From 2008 onwards, the Canadian-based games developer will be controlled by Electronic Arts.

The deal between EA and BioWare will not impact on Mass Effect's release in Australia on November 22nd.

Related Mass Effect Content

Xbox Live Deal of the Week - 18/01/10
19 Jan, 2010 A massive trio.

Mass Effect 2 release date announced
17 Oct, 2009 What a start to the year.

Love to Hate #10
31 Aug, 2009 Massively ineffective exploration of the planetary kind.

7 Comments

Spanca

4 years ago

Apart from porting KOTOR to PC, have Bioware ever done multiplatform games before?

ppjim3

4 years ago

BioWare were (are?) generally a PC developer for most of their previous games. They've done a bunch of console game/ports throughout the years too though. MDK2 was on Dreamcast (first?) and PS2 (MDK2 Armageddon). Their XBOX relationship began with KOTOR and given the similarity between PC and XBOX development they probably just swapped with help from Microsoft and the fact they could sell more games!

This news does suck and it really is a shame that Microsoft didn't own the rights to it (like Halo and Gears of War) because EA will screw BioShock over with Mass Effect. If it's not on every platform known to man by ME2 then EA is no longer EA! Can't wait for Mass Effect DS and Mass Effect PS2... lame.

Jim Dash

4 years ago

Lets hope for future Bioware games on the PS3 then. Only good I can see out of them being bought out by EA.

Capoeira

4 years ago

Spanca wrote

Apart from porting KOTOR to PC, have Bioware ever done multiplatform games before?

I think the question you should be asking is:

Have EA ever released a console exclusive before?

My gut says no, although I could be wrong. Regardless of Bioware's methods in the past, they are now a multi-platform developer, like it or not.

I don't. I reeeeeally don't.

/nthony

4 years ago

Someone else mentioned this and I thought it was interesting. BioWare rock. System Shock rocks. Both are owned by EA. :O

Thats the only positive thing that could be thought of about this, and its stretching it. At least its not until 2008 and EAs poison wont touch Mass Effect 1.

NegativeZero

4 years ago

Spanca wrote

Apart from porting KOTOR to PC, have Bioware ever done multiplatform games before?

PC aside (every one of their games so far is available on PC), not really. But the reason for that is I think really mainly because of the technology. Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire both ran off a heavily modified Neverwinter Nights engine, and I imagine that would be hell to port to PS2, and Gamecube likely didn't have enough capacity on its half-sized DVDs for the games either, let alone a strong market for Western RPGs. Before that, they were essentially making games that just couldn't have worked on any platform but PC.

As essentially an indie, Bioware lacked the financial resources to devote to a PS2 port for either. And probably MS throwing them some incentives helped too. Now that they have EA's backing I think that this excuse would go out the window. The question is whether EA are willing to keep it 360 exclusive, and you'd think that they'd definitely want at least a PC port, probably a PS2 and maybe even a Mac port. As long as it doesn't compromise the games, I really don't think it matters.

The one really big upside to all this is that Dragon Age now has a publisher. It always stunned me that a game with the sort of potential that has had spent years without a publisher.

EDIT:

/\nthony wrote

System Shock rocks. Both are owned by EA. :O

EA only own the System Shock name. The majority of the development team from Looking Glass now work for Irrational / 2K Bostralia. I suspect that Bioshock could have been System Shock 3 if EA didn't own the name.

/nthony

4 years ago

Barely anything is known about Dragon Age though. It would have gotten a publisher sooner or later.

View as forum topic

Add Comment

Like this news?

Share it with this tiny url: http://palg.nu/18b

| More

Mass Effect

Pre-order or buy:
PALGN recommends: www.Play-Asia.com

Australian Release Date:
  22/11/2007 (Confirmed)
Standard Retail Price:
  $99.95 AU
Publisher:
  Microsoft
Genre:
  Action RPG
Year Made:
  2007
Players:
  1

Read more...