Bioware Closing Doors.

[Tawmis]

EA did a lay off and closed the BIOWARE division and cancelled all BIOWARE products (which included the next Mass Effect game that was in production).

I am stunned. Lay offs everywhere... but closing Bioware seems wild to me.

[notbobsmith]

This is terrible news. The writing was on the wall when EA got bought out by private equity and the last few Bioware titles have stumbled, though most of this may have been because of EA's interference. 30 years of history. For me it was Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, and the Mass Effect trilogy. I think the first Mass Effect may be my all-time favorite game. I probably sank more time in that than any other single-player game.

It seems like EA just ruins everything they touch. They buy a developer, the quality goes down, and the developer shutters.

[Collector]

Battening down the hatches before the coming AI crash, perhaps.

[Tawmis]

No doubt, related to AI...

And yes, obviously, Neverwinter Nights was big for me because it led to so many open doors for me creatively for me that I got to explore and do, that I would have never thought possible.

I'd throw Dragon Age: Origins into the mix for high calibur games, for myself, as well as the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO.

[notbobsmith]

A trailer for the in-production Mass Effect game was leaked:



Obviously, not much can be discerned about the plot, and nothing about what gameplay would be like. Nor is it indicative of how far along the game was.

[Rath Darkblade]

The only EA games I played were NWN (eye-opening for 2003), NWN2 (not so eye-opening), DAO, DA2 and DA3.

Never got into Mass Effect, but then I'm not big on sci-fi. (Sorry)

Still big and terrible news.

And just wondering: when is AI (no, not Mr. Lowe ) supposed to crash, again? I thought it was too big to crash. (Then again, they said the same about banks before the last GFC).

[notbobsmith]

The only EA games I played were NWN (eye-opening for 2003), NWN2 (not so eye-opening), DAO, DA2 and DA3.

Never got into Mass Effect, but then I'm not big on sci-fi. (Sorry)

Still big and terrible news.

And just wondering: when is AI (no, not Mr. Lowe ) supposed to crash, again? I thought it was too big to crash. (Then again, they said the same about banks before the last GFC).

That's anybody's guess, but the industry is spending tons of money building these data centers, and they are borrowing lots of money to do it. All while they really don't have the revenue to pay for everything. On top of that, companies invest in eachother making valuations hard to determine (e.g. nVidia invests in an AI company, that company uses that money to by nVidia cards. So did nVidia actually make any money from that?). The most likely scenario for all of this is the dot-com crash. Stock prices were sky high, but no one was actually making money. AI, for better or worse, is not going anywhere, just like the Internet is still here after the crash.