EA Finishes Acquiring DICE

After a quite protracted struggle, Next Generation is reporting that EA has completed acquisition of Digital Illusions CE. From the article: "As part of the agreement, DICE CEO Patrick Söderlund will become an EA Studio general manager. Other DICE leaders will retain their roles in Stockholm. DICE and EA have had a tight working relationship over recent years. 'We've been working very closely with EA for the past five years and this is a very natural step for us as we move into the next generation of gaming,' said Söderlund. To complete the acquisition, EA acquired all of the assets and liabilities of DICE. Shareholders in the studio, which represent about 2.6 million shares, will receive SEK 67.50 ($9.23) per share in cash, which will be paid out on October 16."

Acquiring DICE?

[UbuntuDupe]

I always thought most of EA's projects were a gamble.

*ducks*

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[pilkul]

Might be funnier if EA's projects were actually gambles instead of predictable cash cows.

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[aichpvee]

GP probably meant that buying EA games is always a gamble.

Struggling for five years.

[Anonymous Coward]

"After a quite protracted struggle...","DICE and EA have had a tight working relationship over recent years. "We've been working very closely with EA for the past five years and this is a very natural step for us as we move into the next generation of gaming," said Söderlund."

First a struggle, and then peace!

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[ZWarrior]

So I am not the onlyone that caught that? The question remains then... Was this, or was it not, a struggle that ended in a good company being sent into the chipper?

I hold out no hope for DICE to survive the once great world of EA.

Natural Step

[Kardall]

All I can say, is at least they were working together, and whatever games they produced, they knew what they were. Unlike EA's purchase of the Ultima Online game. Where they totally messed it up.

They've done it many times in the past, where they buy a game, develop it under their name, and they don't let the designers do what they wanted. The game changes, it comes out and people don't buy it.

Please let DICE do their own thing... ya, they have your name, you can approve/disapprove of certain things, but don

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[crabpeople]

"Please let DICE do their own thing"

Where do you think the afformentioned "struggles" came from? As an example, BF1942. It owned so much. You had so much free form area, the maps were large.. BF2 is an abomination (with better graphics) compared to what bf1942+DC was. The maps are tightly encircled, so that you can only go basically, where the "story" of the map puts you. You can tell its bad coding, It couldnt handle huge ass maps with the updated graphics. I am sure EA sacrafices gameplay for graphics. I

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[Kardall]

Ya, today's games however sacrifice graphics for gameplay. It's the way the market is directing it. In a marketing perspective it's perfect.

You make a game with awesome graphics, but 40 hours of gameplay. The people get bored and buy a new game. The cycle repeats.

Downside? People lose respect for the games that they don't get enjoyment out of. They stop buying games from them. Then they try to make a better game, get bought out by a larger company, and make games like The Matrix: The Path of Neo...

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[Kardall]

I would agree with point #5 for the most part. But UO is in it's 9th year... the longest running MMO that is still running today... That in itself kinda redeems itself, but my thoughts are in... "The players of the first game and LBR, they are long gone." Today's UO player is NOT the same as yesteryear, and that will never change. However, if they're still goin, all the power to em...

I played for 5 years, then quit. Time to move onto new things.

Hmmm tasty dice

[Square Snow Man]

They are dont eating it! Who is next on the menu?

EA confuses me...

[__aaclcg7560]

So EA bought a job search site [dice.com]? I didn't think the video game job market was that tight. So is Microsoft going to buy Monster [monster.com]?

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[__aaclcg7560]

Seriously, when I first saw EA and DICE, I thought EA bought a job search website. I never heard of DICE the game developer until now. Of course, I didn't read the article either. :)

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[kinglink]

RT.... oh wait you admited that.

Dice is actually a pretty decent group, Battlefield has been published by EA since 2 at least, which means it's time for EA to dig in and eat up and spit out Battlefield 07 next year.

Honestly the developers are good though and it's a good move for EA assuming they are trying to become more rounded than just movie licenses and sports games.

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[Spudley]

Seriously, when I first saw EA and DICE, I thought EA bought a job search website. I never heard of DICE the game developer until now. Of course, I didn't read the article either. :)

And there was me thinking it was Dillon's Integrated C Environment they'd bought. ....well, stranger things have happened.... haven't they?

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[kalirion]

With their treatment of employees now public knowledge, they desperately need a way of getting more tech talent.

Great, now we can finally be accurate...

[Tavor]

in blaming EA for all these shi*** patches.

Not really worried.

[mmalove]

So I'm guessing, since EA + DICE did BF2, and DICE was working on BF2142, that we won't see a huge change. EA's hand was already in the honeypot, this is just to ensure the authors can't use EA to publish the game, get famous, and then leap out on their own and take the BF name with them. Or at least if they do, it will cost them. I wonder what/if Sid Meier had to pay to keep the Civ name after developing under Microprose? I know companies like that have contract clauses that basically say if you develo

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[maglor_83]

Sid Meier founded MicroProse, so I'm sure he could've managed to keep the rights.

I am altering the deal.

[aapold]

Pray I don't alter it any further.

pinball dreams

[losec]

Was dice first game. Those were the days, small studio, great games.

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[Perseid]

So it IS the same Digital Illusions. I was about to ask that. There was persistent rumor back in the day that they were also former members of The Silents too, but I was never able to confirm that.

Nods to the 2 people who actually know what I'm going on about.

R.I.P. Rallisport Challenge

[Petersko]

Rallisport Challenge 2 for the XBOX was one of my favorite games of all time. I loved it. But I believe MGS retains the rights to the series, and DICE was the developer... so no sequel.

If RC3 (developed by DICE) was to come out, I would buy a next-gen console.

Woohoo!

[MikeTheMan]

Does this mean the next version of Battlefield will only make us sit through ONE unskippable logo at the beginning?

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[AcidLacedPenguiN]

what logos? oh right I deleted them from the folder, freed up like 1.2gb and I could confirm that they are NOT unskippable. . .

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[BulletMagnet]

You can remove the BIK intro movies very simply. - I've removed them from my install and it shaves off a full minute off the startup and it immediately drops you to the BF2 Login window.

(as taken from TweakGuide)

Disabling the Intro Movies

The introductory movies to BF2, although fun to watch the first couple of times, fast become quite annoying, adding to the startup times for the game, as well as the memory usage (the main movie is 135MB in size). To disable them permanently, I don't recommend deleting the

London, Ontario studio closed

[dottyslashdottydot]

This isn't being reported in the news for some reason, but EA closed the London, Ontario, Canada studio of DICE yesterday, laying off all the staff there. They got a nice severance package, and they're being interviewed for positions with EA in Montreal and Vancouver. Sucks if they want to stay in London, though.