Electronic Arts is out more money than we'll ever see... and up two studios! They've shelled out almost a billion dollars to purchase BioWare and Pandemic, a pair of popular software developers. Wired says:
EA has announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Group, a move that would net them both BioWare and Pandemic Studios. The BioWare title Mass Effect is due for release in November; Pandemic's Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is scheduled for a February release.
EA will hand over as much as $620 million in cash to VG Holding Group stockholders, and will issue an additional $155 million in equity to certain key members of VG Holding. The transaction is expected to close in January 2008.
Pandemic president and co-founder Josh Resnick called EA "the ideal partner to bring our titles to market as global entertainment events," while BioWare's CEO Ray Muzyka said that "John Riccitiello's new vision for EA...is consistent with BioWare's focus on crafting the highest quality story-driven games in the world."
Why is this important for us? It means that Electronic Arts once again has a studio in Austin, TX - a studio co-run by Rich Vogel, one of the leads on the Privateer Online!
This is a short one - the January 31, 1992 issue of Point of Origin is only a single sheet of paper. That means there's only one article that deals with Wing Commander - the usual 'press roundup' of glowing praise for the series (quoted below). The rest of the issue is fascinating, though, from insight into how employee evaluations work at Origin to an invitation to a poetry reading by Richard Garriott...
A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!
Bernie Yee reviews Wing 2 in the January 27 issue of PC Magazine's 'After Hours' section. He says that 'even though it's not the ground-breaking product that Wing I was, it is nonetheless dazzling.' The rest of the review is just as good, as I recall. (Does anybody know where our copy of the magazine is?)
Almost equally-flattering is CGRs preview of Epic, the new space-combat game from Ocean U.K. It starts off: 'Attention Amiga and Atari ST owners--tired of wishing ORIGIN would port Wing Commander II onto your platform? Epic is the answer.' It goes on to say how Epic is just about the next best thing in always to Wing 2 for those machines. It even compares a screen shot to Wing 2's! Look for a copy on one of the bulletin boards in ORIGIN East and West.
In the U.K.'s Strategy Plus, reviewers were asked to list the pro's and con's of 1991. 5 out of 8 of them listed Wing or Wing 2 as a 'pro' (one of those guys listed installing Wing 2 as a 'con').
Point of Origin
Vol. II, No. 10 - January 17, 1992
Contents
Anything for a Story
Press Roundup
Don't Forget...
Take a Look At Yourself
Swelling Ranks
Off the Clock
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