on BioWare's official message boards. For those of you who like to cling
to rumors, Chris doesn't flat out deny it, but don't get your hopes up.
Here's his forum post:
Man every year as we get close to E3 along comes another rumor that
we're being bought by Microsoft. So here is our Official response to
this rumor:
"BioWare's upcoming Xbox action-RPG, Jade Empire, is based on an
entirely new BioWare intellectual property and slated for a Holiday 2004
release. Microsoft is the publisher for Jade Empire. Microsoft is a
certainly a valued business partner with whom BioWare enjoys a very
positive and cooperative relationship".Basically, what it means is that
we don't comment on rumors.
_____
The Canadian based development studio Bioware, most popular for their
recent Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic title, is set to be
acquired by Microsoft according to several internet reports issued
earlier today.
The reports state that Microsoft is planning an announcement at the
upcoming E3 in Los Angeles that will reveal the acquisition of one of
the most successful RPG developers this side of Japan. The information
is based on reports from a senior Microsoft Game Studios official who
broke the news under condition of anonymity.Some of Bioware's most
notable projects, aside from the aforementioned KOTOR, include
Neverwinter Knights and Baldur's Gate, but the studio is hard at work on
another Xbox title for Microsoft Game Studios, titled Jade Empire.With
Microsoft's track record of acquiring big ticket developers (Rare,
Bungie), it seems reasonable to assume the reports are true, but with no
official word coming from either Microsoft of Bioware, we'll just have
to wait until E3 to find out for sure.
Ok so let's see here. Interplay gets into trouble, and Bioware jumps
ship to Microsoft? This comes on the heels of Interplays latest
announcements about their woes, and the fact they no longer have the DnD
License, which means no more DnD games from Bioware whom I believe
depended on Interplay for those licenses if I'm not mistaken. And
without interplay we definitely won't see any more Baldur's Gate games
since they own the copyrights.Now is this a good thing for the us as
gamers or the Tech Industry as a whole? People are already complaining
about derivative titles and the fact that it is almost impossible to
break through with anything remotely original in the market today. More
consolidation of smaller companies by giants such as Microsoft isn't
going to help this very much.
-Gel
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