Cools! was here...
Megapublisher to distribute new IP from Gears of War-maker, forthcoming collaboration between Suda-51 and Shinji Mikami.REDWOOD CITY--Though Electronic Arts has made some major acquisitions in recent years--most notably Digital Illusions CE (2006) and BioWare/Pandemic (2008)--the publisher also has less disruptive ways of working with external developers.In 2006, the now-second-largest third-party publisher announced it would distribute Crytek's Crysis and Valve Software's The Orange Box. The following year, it revealed it would handle marketing, PR, and retail duties for MTV Games' Rock Band, developed by Guitar Hero creators Harmonix. Just last month at the E3 Media & Business Summit, EA stunned many by announcing a deal with longtime Activision partner id Software to help bring its open-world road-action game Rage to stores.The key to these landmark deals is EA Partners, a program which has the publisher lend its marketing, distribution, financial, and retail expertise to indie shops for a cut of their games' proceeds. As explained by John Carmack at E3, the program offers a range of services to indie developers. The flexibility EAP offers is attractive to many studios, and today at the publisher's first post-E3 media showcase, EA announced two more deals which few could have predicted.The first will see EA join forces with Epic Games, the powerhouse North Carolinian developer and creator of the Unreal Engine 3, which lies at the heart of games like Mass Effect and Hour of Victory. Epic's project with EA will be an action game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, with development handled by Epic's Poland-based People Can Fly, the studio behind Painkiller.This is not the first time Epic has teamed with a big-name publisher in order to get its games on shelves. The developer has also partnered with Midway Games to publish Unreal Tournament III and with Microsoft for the Gears of War games, the second of which is due out November 7.Also on hand at today's event was Goichi Suda--sometimes referred to as Suda-51--head of the maverick Japanese developer Grasshopper Manufacture. The EAP program will handle North American distribution for Suda's next project, a collaboration with designer Shinji Mikami.The project will be an action-horror game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC. Suda will direct the title, while Mikami will serve as a producer. They will have even more help, as EA has said Q Entertainment (Lumines, Meteos) will also work on the project.The pair of Mikami and Suda boasts an impressive resume, with Suda having created cult favorites Killer7 and No More Heroes, and Mikami having created the Resident Evil franchise. In recent years, Mikami reinvented his hit series with GameSpot's 2005 Game of the Year Resident Evil 4, and signed on to create another new game for Platinum Games and Sega.
I hate EA from any and all perspectives. I wish every single employee would suddenly develop a hideous disease and die a horrible, painful death. That's how much I hate them.
His mistake, not mine.
I'm hoping people like Greg will change EA from the inside.
