Industry Icon Award for Westwood Studios veterans

Matthias M.

Atomic_Noodles · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Oct 2011

Quote:

That subtle diss on EA

Watched it as well.

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Crimsonum · Seth **Joined**: 14 Jul 2005 **Location**: Fineland

Westwood sold themselves. I don't consider very loyal to a franchise to sell it to the highest bidder. You know the only thing $perry ever cared about was making profit with C&C when he himself admits it. Also, don't forget this cutscene. Oh the in-house sarcasm/tongue-in-cheek humour.

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^Rampastein · Rampastring **Joined**: 11 Oct 2008 **Location**: Gensokyo

Crimsonum wrote:

Westwood sold themselves. I don't consider very loyal to a franchise to sell it to the highest bidder. You know the only thing $perry ever cared about was making profit with C&C when he himself admits it. It was never a secret.

Weren't they sold to EA by Virgin Interactive? Although it's true that Westwood sold themselves to Virgin Interactive in 1992.

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OmegaBolt · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 4:17 pm Post subject:

Yeah, it's not quite like they sold the franchise. They sold the whole company. And that can be for many reasons, including financial stability. If they were always able to be independent and make enough money to survive and build bigger and better games I'm sure they wouldn't have done it. I don't know why anyone would, except as I said for survival or growth reasons.

Matthias M. · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:03 pm Post subject:

Selling to EA isn't really the big deal to me. Making the exit as a startup when things become hard to manage is an action I can understand. However as EA closing the company instead of rehabilitating it, sounds like market condition. That is a valid tactic to eliminate competition. They just should not expect sympathy for it.

Tore · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 11:41 pm Post subject:

Westwood wasn't a startup in 1998 when they sold to EA. They had been around for 13 years by that point. (Since 1985) It wasn't the first time they sold, as previously mentioned they sold to Virgin Games in 1992.

They sold to EA because Virgin Interactive (Virgin Games changed name to Virgin Interactive in 1995) were selling off their assets in the US. They sold to EA as they said they usually do not interfere with the business of successful subsidiaries.

After selling to EA structural changes happened in the company. The old flat structure was replaced with a more rigid one. Giving a lot of people roles and specific jobs rather than allowing them to flow between the jobs and roles they wanted as was the old ways. This is one of the many reasons why for instance TS had a troubled development and was released in the state it was missing a lot of "promised" features.

Westwood was closed in 2003.

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G-E · Defense Minister **Joined**: 09 Feb 2015

The Civilization franchise was sold/licensed a few times as I recall, with various unrelated developers having a crack at it after it got stuck in a similar timewarp as RA2.

I think this was just another case of WW, a company run by enthusiasts, being squashed under the corporate thumb of a larger company.

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