BioWare Montreal absorbed by EA Motive. Mass Effect IP returns to Edmonton

This is very much how I see it. It never made sense to me that non-90s reviews would kill any chance of DLC from a company that tends to attach a lot of importance to it, but I can easily buy the argument that no DLC will be forthcoming thanks to a physical obstacle - such as no teams available to do it and office moves taking place during the period. I can certainly see EA deciding to take the financial hit from no DLC to let them reorganise in the run up to stuff like Anthem and BF2.

This also would explain the paradox of how Jason was being told about 'empty desks' without anyone actually being fired, and why Bioware's NDA was so necessary.

Having said that, if one was already in dev then I doubt this would have any effect. Most office moves I've been through tend to minimise lost working hours.

Mass Effect remains a hugely valuable IP.

Whatever happens in the coming months I don't see any likelihood of EA/BioWare walking away from it long term, particularly with Casey at the helm.

Flabbergasted at the lack of knowledge people have about how game development works.

If the turbulent development period for MEA is to be believed (and I do think so) then it's possible they just didn't have the time and resources to develop DLC alongside the base game as is usual.





I don't think that's fair. They seem to have started developing MEA pretty much as soon as ME3 ended, they certainly didn't sacrifice MEA for Anthem any more than they sacrificed it for DAI. In fact it seems that the Edmonton studio took a break from working on Anthem to help save MEA, and as a result Anthem got delayed. If anything Anthem was sacrificed for MEA, not the other way around.

I think it's a good thing Bioware is experimenting with a new IP and just because it's a different type of game than what they usually make doesn't mean it's bad. Not every game they make has to cater to the same audience. If they hadn't experimented before we would have never gotten Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

I'm not contesting the fact they want to do new IPs but that they did that at the expense of the older ones. I think they did sacrifice MEA for Anthem in terms of lesser amount of money and workforce invested in the project if put in relation to Anthem. You can see clear as day the disparity in terms of quality and facial animations. Let's not fool ourselves, they invested less in MEA because it was a lesser focus. They invested so little that in the end people had to be sent there from Edmonton to salvage the thing and made the game available. To give this little focus to MEA was a deliberate business decision to favor other IPs.

I can't see anything "clear as day" as all we have for Anthem is one trailer which is not an indicator of how the final game will look at all.

Plus I think the Montreal team had more than enough time, resources and manpower to develop a fully fledged ME title, the fact that their original concept didn't pan out and the game had to be salvaged last minute by a different team is not due to insufficient allocation of resources.

The trailer is with ingame engine, show portions of gameplay and feature immensly better details and graphics.

My point still stand and doesn't excuse the errors of management that were made. If we are to believe the rumors of MEA troubled development then yes Montreal was understaffed, crunched and with developers leaving left and right and was rescued very late by BW Edmonton. If we are to believe the reports they even mentioned devs lacking proper developing tools and sufficient manpower to smoothen all the animations. Clearly Montreal has not received the support they needed.

You have two options at this point either:

believe the reports and believe Montreal didn't received the support they needed till very late in development
OR
The montreal team was made by incompetents uncapable of developing a quality game.

I believe in the first option. What do you believe in?

Projects can fail only for three reasons:
1) Lack of funds in relation to the goal of the project
2) Lack of a sufficient skilled workforce (management included) in relation to the objectives of the project
3) Both

And here I was hoping for some counterarguments if your arguments are at this level then I believe you want to defend a company very very badly despite the controversy and lack of polishing that their last product received at release so you're avoiding to apply logic and common sense on the entire issue. Ok be an apologist what should I tell you.

I fail to see how this move equates to no dlc. It's not like BioWare has said anything that supports that claim.

Activision walked away from Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk pro skater.

Point is, ME ran its course and had its time. There is nothing wrong with Bioware wanting to move on. Now if MEA was a smash hit like DAI then I could see EA wanting to make one more, but that didnt happen.

It's public knowledge though at this point. As its been confirmed to be real. There's nothing really to keep from the public at this point.