Quote:Electronic Art's purchase of Criterion means that Electronic Art's will be able to further expand the number of games they create with the help of the Guildford studio, which contains more then 60 developers.

The purchase also means that Electronic Arts now own the rights for the Burnout and Black franchises, which have been selling well recently. As with all purchases this will mean that Electronic Arts has a much wider library of staff and resources to create games for all consoles.

Along with Criterion Electronic Arts have essentially purchased their RenderWare technology, one that is used in about a quarter of games. The company will keep lending RenderWare to other companies but also work on RenderWare4 for the next generation consoles.

“This is a great fit,” said EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst. “Criterion offers us studio talent and a proven management team, globally recognized intellectual property and technology infrastructure that will accelerate our readiness on the next generation of consoles.”

“Combining EA’s tools and technology libraries with the existing RenderWare technologies will create a superior platform for game development,” said Criterion CEO David Lau-Kee. “This system will provide the most powerful common technological framework for creating great games. Our work on RenderWare4, combined with EA’s next generation efforts, will also boost development efforts on the next generation of consoles which are expected to debut over the next two years.”

“Our mission has always been to create exciting new franchises that appeal to the widest possible audience,” said Fiona Sperry, Head of Criterion Games. “Within EA, we can now secure our future as one of the world’s leading development studios.”

Quote:Has EA done this to small companies in the past?