Oddzball Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 I'm curious. EA owns SWTOR, which is produced by BioWare/Mythic. But EA also owns Funcom, which is doing TSW. Is the company who created SWTOR basically making an MMO to compete with itself? I'm confused as to why this would be a good idea. Since they own both, how is it that SWTOR wont be affected by the launch of another MMO from the same company? Will this pull resources and funding from SWTOR? What do you folks think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puppup Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 You need to research a bit more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Zone Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 LucasArts owns SWTOR. EA is publishing it, and BioWare is developing it. Hope that helps a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddzball Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 LucasArts owns SWTOR. EA is publishing it, and BioWare is developing it. Hope that helps a bit. Well i dont think thats right... SWTOR is owned by EA, thats why they claim it in their investor reports. They receive the revenue. What do you mean research more? EA does own SWTOR, (Lucas just gets part of the pie) And EA does own Funcom, so by proxy they are the publisher for TSW... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bloopbleep Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 I don't believe EA owns Funcom. They are publishing it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bielduwyn Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Co-publishing it in fact. You can buy TSW using your existing Funcom account, thus, without need for an EA/Origin account or download. PHEW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddzball Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 I don't believe EA owns Funcom. They are publishing it though. Man why the hell would you publish a game that directly competes with your flagship product for the year? I mean competition is good but that's like Chevy helping Ford produce vehicles... I dont see why they would want to do this when it clearly could affect their own game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puppup Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Ever notice how many different Chevies are out there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobNightfall Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 (edited) Man why the hell would you publish a game that directly competes with your flagship product for the year? I mean competition is good but that's like Chevy helping Ford produce vehicles... I dont see why they would want to do this when it clearly could affect their own game. Because they're being paid too. Essentially, EA is working hard at becoming a monopoly. They aren't there yet, and in fact have years to go before they get close, but if they own a piece of every game ever produced it won't matter how much competition they have. And EA owns BW, which owns SWTOR. They pay LucasArts a licensing fee to use Star Wars. Edit: Oh yeah, they own Mythic and Warhammer as well. Edited April 20, 2012 by RobNightfall Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keta Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 One of the reasons LucasArts selected Bioware was because of their development on KOTOR1. One of the reasons EA purchased Bioware was because of SW:TOR. And EA does have other mmo titles so yes more research needs to be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddzball Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 Back to the topic at hand. Having EA who is the primary investor in SWTOR publish another MMO, is this going to affect SWTORs development? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MahBo Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Madden is an MMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddzball Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 (edited) One of the reasons LucasArts selected Bioware was because of their development on KOTOR1. One of the reasons EA purchased Bioware was because of SW:TOR. And EA does have other mmo titles so yes more research needs to be done. EA owns Warhammer and UO, but both are basically dead games. TSW is a new MMO, and I'm curious how a publisher would want to support two possibly competing products. Edited April 20, 2012 by Oddzball Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obiwansghost Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 EQ and EQ2 compete against each other, as well as a host of other games that do and they are doing fine. Blizzard has WoW and D3, while not direct competitors of the same genre, they still/will compete against each other. TOR will be fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shingara Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 They are publishers of UO, Warhammer, Need for Speed Worlds, SWTOR and TSW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asuka Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Mega billion dollar company publishing for a smaller company is kinda a win/win especially when the developer is already handling 2 mmos on their own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Distracted Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 I'm curious how a publisher would want to support two possibly competing products. It's simple really. Money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCBull Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 I don't believe EA owns Funcom. They are publishing it though. The are CO-publishing. Funcom owns Funcom and TSW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCBull Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 They are CO-publishing. Funcom owns Funcom and TSW. They are CO-publishing. Funcom owns Funcom. Funcom owns The Secret World. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerion Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 EA makes a dozen game titles a year...is that considered 'competing with itself'? Blizzard is at work on another MMO. Big shock..game companies make games. There's nothing to be concerned about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKMaster Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Rule of thumb...if it says Star Wars, Lucas owns it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightmaguz Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 EA has eaten numerous mmos throughout the years, some are even still online albeit at reduced levels for various reasons. Ultima(and that's an undying classic, it's such a pity they killed Origin...) Earth and Beyond(Westwood rip.) DAOC(mythic was butchered and some of the team is in tor now as I understand.) WAR(and that's when mythic was butchered =p) TOR The reason for "competing with itself" is money. Ideology never stands in the way of money, the Soviet Union and the Civilized countries had many many commercial deals and they were threatening to bomb the whole world over ideology, greed has no boundaries as long as there's profit. They're earning something off this mmo the other option was STILL compete against them and earn nothing, simple when you look at it this way, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GalacticKegger Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 (edited) EA has eaten numerous mmos throughout the years, some are even still online albeit at reduced levels for various reasons. Ultima(and that's an undying classic, it's such a pity they killed Origin...) Earth and Beyond(Westwood rip.) DAOC(mythic was butchered and some of the team is in tor now as I understand.) WAR(and that's when mythic was butchered =p) TOR The reason for "competing with itself" is money. Ideology never stands in the way of money, the Soviet Union and the Civilized countries had many many commercial deals and they were threatening to bomb the whole world over ideology, greed has no boundaries as long as there's profit. They're earning something off this mmo the other option was STILL compete against them and earn nothing, simple when you look at it this way, right? I really miss E&B. That game was excellent (Jenquai Explorer ftw.) Too bad the emulator never happened. EA develops mostly single and multiplayer games. For MMOs they pretty much buy partnership rights to a title (or just buy a dev house outright) and do the front end marketing and distribution. I think EA's last foray into MMOs was Sims Online. (There's your sandbox folks ... and you're welcome to it.) Otherwise most of EA's games are either console jobs or console ports. Stay away from TigerWoods Online for the PC lol. Edited April 20, 2012 by GalacticKegger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notsocool Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Why do people insist that every MMO must compete with each other? Not every MMO player prowls MMO news waiting for the next game. Every time a decent MMO is being developed there are people posting on the forums of older MMOs saying "That new MMO will kill this one!" Do you think every SWTOR player came from another MMO? Do you think the goal of every MMO is to grab all the customers in the entire market? Do you think that the market will never grow or shrink? At the time of WoW's release, there were likely less than 2 million MMO players (not counting asia, where the subscription system is entirely diferent). WoW peaked at arond 13 million subscribers. Where do you think those extra 11 million came from, never mind that otherMMOs were also being introduced in the meantime? Do you think every new MMO since then has been taking new subs solely from WoW? TSW is completely different setting. Setting matters. Without ANY setting at all, MMOs would be nothing but blank numbers and statistics. Would you play this game if every enemy was a nondescript block? Clearly not, otherwise you'd be armpit deep in Minecraft right now (It's a great game, I'm told). I play this game because it's futuristic. I gave up on WoW not because it was a bad game (I still think it's pretty well done, despite the insistence of detractors) but because I have long ago grown weary of the tolkien-style fantasy genre (I mean, if you have something really wildly different, like a setting based on indian mythology or at least very very unique races, I might be interested). I play ToR and CoH for exactly that reason. Yes, I sub to more than one MMO. Heavn forbid! I like more than one MMO! No, I don't treat MMOs like damn football teams. If I support one, I'm damn well allowed to support another. So no, there's no "Conflict of interest" or "competing with itself" unless Funcom decides to suddenly make another Star Wars MMO and EA magically decides to publish it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordSkyKnight Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 EA has eaten numerous mmos throughout the years, some are even still online albeit at reduced levels for various reasons. Ultima(and that's an undying classic, it's such a pity they killed Origin...) Earth and Beyond(Westwood rip.) DAOC(mythic was butchered and some of the team is in tor now as I understand.) WAR(and that's when mythic was butchered =p) TOR The reason for "competing with itself" is money. Ideology never stands in the way of money, the Soviet Union and the Civilized countries had many many commercial deals and they were threatening to bomb the whole world over ideology, greed has no boundaries as long as there's profit. They're earning something off this mmo the other option was STILL compete against them and earn nothing, simple when you look at it this way, right? To this day I still hold a gudge against EA with what happened with Origin. I used to like Mythic as well until they sold out to EA. I remember them saying they would never sell to anyone and like three months later they made the announcement of the sell of the company to EA LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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