John Porcaro

of Gamerscore Blog weighs in on EA’s purchase of Bioware.  Will this affect the release of Mass Effect?  What about sequels in the series?  You can bet the phones are ringing from Redmond to Redwood right about now!

With the announcement of EA’s purchase of Bioware and Pandemic, vis a vis the VGHolding group for $620 million and another $155million in equity for key partners in the play, some fans have wondered what this means for the impending release of Mass Effect and will this mean we’ll see a PS3 version of the title?

John Porcaro addresses the first item:
First, and most important right now, EA’s acquisition of BioWare will not change the current release schedule for Mass Effect.  All of us are excited for the game’s worldwide release, starting Nov. 20.  Everyone at BioWare (the owners of the Mass Effect IP) and Microsoft (the exclusive publisher of Mass Effect) are committed to keeping everything on track.  And yes, Mass Effect will be an Xbox 360 exclusive, despite any rumors (or wishful thinking) to the contrary. 

However, yesterday’s EA Investor conference call left Gamedaily.biz editor David Radd to ponder:
…the future of Mass Effect lies in EA's hands; as such it wouldn't be surprising to see the highly anticipated franchise end up on PS3 or other platforms as well. EA also noted that the highly touted dialog engine created for Mass Effect could be put to use in other titles.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  First Google taking swipes at M$- and now EA?  What’s this world coming to?

You can read the rest of John’s post HERE.

Note this comment left on John’s Blog:
# re: Mass Effect Fully On Track for November 20
Thursday, October 11, 2007 9:03 PM by opium
like rats leaving a sinking ship

peter moore
bizzare
bungie
bioware

etc

Hmmm – interesting take on that