EA Buys Firemint

Regardless of what this means to firemint/quality of their games, I am once again infuriated by the EA mentality of "if you can't beat em, buy em"!!! Competition is good-it challenges developers to create better products...EA's approach seems to be buyout or block anything that performs better than their product.(see madden vs. Nfl 2k as a prime example!)

Grrrrrr....

 

Hi all, just quickly wanted to say that we're very excited to be joining up with EA and this will in no way negatively effect our current/future games.

It's business as usual here at Firemint; we'll continue to support our released games and continue work on our upcoming titles

Here's an official note from our CEO, Rob Murray:
(link)

 

Looks like this will be the end of Firemint and it's AAA titles. A lot of game studios die in EA's hands like westwood, games get released half done and/or with a TON of stuff missing like Spore and The Sims. EA then sells these "missing" stuff as add ons to milk the cow. hence these great games fail.

@Firemint
Don't let your guard down. Everyone knows EA's history.

 

Interesting comments. I would have thought that with there being more NFS games and their having had plenty of $0.99 sales that would not be the case. They also seem to me to be more casual than the RR titles, and the cars easier to control, but the graphics certainly seem to be pushing things more than anything else right now in this area.

As for Infinite Interactive, I was really hoping that their being bought would allow some funds to go to their well neglected better titles, with like a new TBS Warlords game - I'm not sure how this new situation would affect such things, but I just can't see it being good.

 

So when you publish games now. Example Agent Squeak(Which comes out when?) will they be published by Ea?

 

Good to hear for you guys Firemint. Hope you guys continue to stay active on these forums. From what I hear, this sounds like a good thing for you. Best of luck with all your future games.

 

I'm usually perplexed when a dev house loses its "independence"...anyway, your words seem to be optimistic, so I will be optimist like you
Good luck guys!

 

EA could use a little bit of the Firemint charm in polish in their sports/racing titles. Here is to hoping Firemint takes over EA mobile from the inside.

 

Anyone remember Reckless Racing!Bye bye Firemint and Real Racing as major cometitor to Need for speed on iOS.very clever ea cant beat them buy them.I hope Im wrong because dont want any ea ******** with "paid for nothing or updates if any updates"etc. cant ****** believe.

 

Feels more like:

To me it sounds like EA just enjoy grooming smaller companies with promises it's all about the games and not the insane income they'll be getting. If lowering quality meant bigger bonuses for the EA bosses, that's the route they'd go.

 

My views or feelings on this is Firemint needed to sell to keep the studio going. If you have 50+ staff to pay plus office costs each month then times that by per year - well it comes to a shit load of money.

Now Real Racing 2 was released before Xmass to get large holiday profit but EA had their sale on with Apple promoting that sale. So Real Racing 2 probably did not hit it's predicted profit over the holidays. Plus when you consider it cost 2 million to make and if you compare Real Racing 1 chart positions to Real Racing 2 then you will notice the first game was a better performer.

So in away for Firemint to be in this digital distribution space they had no choice but to sell to EA if they wanted to be around in the next few years.


When you look at the business model for a studio you soon realise that the profit has to keep generating to keep the studio going... And that is the crux of the problem which is very high risk.

My theory on how the App Store is and EA's big push to take over is really doomed because EA still holds the belief that the studio way is the only way to make big profit. What excites me about this space is that a small group of talented people can make such a big difference. All you need to do is get a small core team - 2 programmers and 1 talented artist and outsource any extra assets that need doing. A team that size can work at home and save costs on offices, create 3 top notch games a year, in other words low running costs. And if any of those games hits big profit then that profit between 3 people is a greater share than what a large studio needs to pay out each year to keep on going.

My conclusion is that talented small teams, who can afford to invest over a 100,000USD on start up costs can make large profits and survive in the App Store. Once those profits start to come in you can offer work for hire to teams and build up a games list. Small is the key to success. And outsourcing is your friend...

 

Chillingo had angry birds, and cut the rope.

 

And Helsing's Fire!!!

 

didn't rovio keep AB?

 

I have no clue what goes on in those deals, but angry birds original is still giving chillingo a % of its income i would assume as chillingo still published it.

 

Sapphire neo, thanks for the link!

So now, wonder if it was a good thing.