And next, all of the talent anybody cares about leaves the company?
 

http://home.businesswire.com/portal...400&newsLang=en

Irrational Games is now "2K Boston". One step on the road to their destruction? They are so awesome, this is really too bad... I know it's supposedly just a name change, but these things... :(

I'll start being worried when the talent begins leaving.

Or if Bioshock bombs.

Yeah, their only chance is if Bioshock sells well. If it doesn't... it's probably pretty much over.

And now two more companies join the ranks of the imminently doomed...

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071011/20071011006083.html?.v=1

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=198263

So how long until Bioware goes the way of Origin and Bullfrog? Only a Will Wright-style unbroken string of successes and ability to work in a company like that could save it, and I'm not going to bet on that given the track record of these things... for every case where it actually works out (Blizzard for instance) there are many, many more where it doesn't. :bummed:

Really, really bad news, obviously. Bioware is one of the very best... it's not surprising though. Bioware and Pandemic, if you recall, were purchased by Elevation Partners a year or two ago, a company then headed by John Riccitiello, an ex EA CEO who is now again CEO of EA. So he bought the companies which he had overseen for a while before going back to EA.

When was the last time that Maxis made a really great game? It was Simcity 4 and that was 4 1/2 years, and multiple Sims expansions, ago.

Spore's about the only thing they've got left.

Well, Maxis is pretty much nonexistent aside for Will Wright's team, it seems to me, which is part of why that is -- they don't have other teams making other stuff anymore... and he's been busy on Spore for quite a while now. Before that he made Sims 2, which wasn't as successful as the first game but was probably okay if you liked it... I was never interested in those games so I've never actually played them. That doesn't mean that they're bad games though.

The Sims is nothing more than a cash-cow that EA has been milking for the past seven years. The first one was pretty good, because it was something new, but since then the whole series has just been driven completely into the ground.

And now the next Simcity game is going to another team.