Tagged News: bioware

Electronic Arts has officially completed the purchase of Bioware and Pandemic, which includes a slew of new titles in development, including an MMO out of BioWare's Austin offices.

Details after the click.

Game Informer has an article today indicating that the North American Stock Exchange (NASDAQ) has sent Atari its second notice of "delisting":

tari received the Nasdaq notice on December 21 because the market value of the company's publicly-traded shares was less than $15 million for 30 consecutive business days.

If Atari is unable to maintain the $15 million minimum market value for at least 10 consecutive trading days before March 20, 2008, Nasdaq will delist Atari's stock. If that happens, Atari will appeal.

There's not much more in the article but we will be keeping a close eye on the situation.

Gamasutra has an interview with Bioware's Brian DuBose about playtesting and maintaining Bioware's model:

'We're Not Looking To Integrate EA's Practices'

"QA is the voice of the customer within the organization," Dubose stated. It's also important, he said, because it's a service to developers and programmers. "It's important to remember that," he stressed.

Dubose recalled having seen antagonistic relationships before, when programmers see the QA staff as "in the way," while from the QA standpoint, they're just trying to get the game done.

"It's not QA saying 'you guys suck,'" Dubose reminded. "It's QA pointing out the problems and saying, 'here's where the game is.'" It's essential, Dubose said, because ultimately, quality affects the bottom line.

It's an interesting read and will set aside some concerns players have voiced after Bioware's merger with EA.

LucasArts and BioWare today announced that they would co-create and publish an upcoming "interactive entertainment product", details of which will be released later this year. The two companies have a history, as BioWare did the original Knights of the Old Republic, a popular Star Wars RPG.

For anyone who has not followed the news for the last year, this project is almost certainly the unannounced MMORPG in development at BioWare Austin, which just happens to be staffed by many former Star Wars Galaxies developers. Officially, though, that' just a guess, of course.

The two have also announced a new website at www.LucasArtsBioWare.com.

Read the details after the click.

NPD, the organization responsible for all sorts of rankings, has put out their Top 10 Best Selling PC Games (found at Voodoo Extreme). Mask of the Betrayer is sitting pretty at #4:

1) Half Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box - Electronic Arts - $46
2) Nancy Drew: Legend Of The Crystal Skull - Her Interactive - $20
3) The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $28
4) Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask Of The Betrayer Expansion Pack - Atari - $30
5) World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $27
6) World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $20
7) World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Vivendi - $40
8) Reel Deal Slots Ghost Town - Phantom EFX - $20
9) The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts - $35
10) World In Conflict - Vivendi - $50

For more, check out NWN2 WarCry.

The latest version of NWN Podcast is available for download. Here's the agenda:

And NOW, without further A DO! Your next episode of the Neverwinter Nights podcast!

Once again there is lots of news, and for the main topic we have a Toolset Round Table Discussion led by renowned artist and NWN modeler, Jonny Ree. He is joined by Bruce Nielson famous for his Light Reborn series and story-telling; Jason Roy, the winner of the Obsidian NWN2 Module Contest with Grimm Brigade; and Zachary Holbrook, second place winner of the contest with his module called the Birthday.

Read more after the jump.

Electronic Arts (EA) has purchased "VG Holding Corp", the company that owns both BioWare and Pandemic. The two companies will now join the EA family in some capacity, pending regulatory approval. The deal is expected to close by January 2008.

The press release specifically mentions both the Austin, TX office and the fact that the MMO it is working on is involved, but beyond that, and what relationship BioWare Austin could have with EA Mythic are unknown.

For more, click below.

NWN 2 WarCry hosted a developer chat tonight with over ten Obsidian folks in attendance and over fifty fans. A lot of interesting information came out of the chat.

In attendance:

Andrea Bobick, animator
Andy Woo, programmer
Brandon Adler, production QA
George Ziets, creative lead
Jeff Husges, designer
Rob McGinnis, community mgr
Jean-Eric Khalife, artist

What can you tell us about the new prestige classes? Favored Soul, Spirit Shaman, Invisible Blade, Red Wizard, is this the full list?

For prestige classes we also have Sacred Fist, Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep, and Stormlord
[OEI]Jhusges: yeah, favored soul and spirit shaman are the new base classes
[OEI]BAdler: You forgot Invisible Blade
[OEI]awoo: Invisible Blade and Red Wizard were mentioned in the question.

Click below to read the log.

This is just a reminder that we will be hosting a developer chat with the folks from Obsidian Entertainment. Here are the details:

When: Monday, August 27, 2007 at 6pm PST/7pm MST/8pm CST/9pm EST and GMT -8

Where: irc.warcry.com::6667 (irc.chatspike.net::6667) #nwn2

Don't have an IRC client? No problem! You can use our Java client.

So connect early and chat with others about NWN2, then chat with the Obsidian Entertainment developers. Thanks to Obsidian Entertainment and Shane DeFreest for their commitment to the community.

The much anticipated BioWare MMORPG is coming in 2009, according to an article in InformationWeek (found via Slashdot). The article talks about some of the underlying technical details of the project and mentions the potential release date. So far, we have not heard much on this title, save that it is in development at BioWare's new Austin office under the guidance of Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel. Some reports have suggested that the game will be another Star Wars MMO based on the company's popular Knights of the Old Republic RPG.

Read more in InformationWeek.