But nowhere near as powerful as Miyamoto-san bringing dangerous weapons on stage with him at public live events:
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Man, that's what I miss about E3. There used to be cool and wacky stuff like this. As nice as Nintendo Directs are, and as awkward as E3 2008 was for Nintendo, I still miss the live stage presentations. Xbox, PlayStation, and everyone else's presentations are just so sterile compared to what Nintendo used to do.
I've understood that for a while, but it's still gonna feel like the end of an era when EA inevitably shuts BioWare down for lackluster performance. Even if the people who worked on them aren't working there anymore, I loved the Mass Effect Trilogy and the earlier Dragon Age games, and it was a shame to see the quality of their stuff drop off over the last few years.
I actually don't think BioWare is getting shut down. It's an idea that's commonly passed around because:
1) Mass Effect Andromeda flopped
2) EA shut down Visceral Games
The debt for ME: Andromeda has already been paid. That was developed by BioWare Montreal, who before were mainly responsible for ME3's (great) multiplayer. They don't really exist anymore because of how they screwed up Andromeda, and have been dissolved and absorbed into other studios throughout EA. Many of them were turned to work on Battlefront II that year.
Visceral was shut down, but the only notable thing they did before that was Dead Space, which isn't that big a franchise in the grand scheme of things. After that, they made Battlefield: Hardline, which didn't do too well. They were then closed down because their Star Wars game was too linear, like Uncharted, when every major game on the market is open-world, so how is a studio like Visceral, who makes linear single-player games, supposed to make any money? Unfortunately, that's just where we're at right now. Open-world, nonlinear game design is what every game needs to have now. AAA linear experiences aren't as marketable, unless your name is Naughty Dog.
Prior to that, the only other studio EA "shut down" in recent years was Danger Close Games, who made the two Medal of Honor games from 2010 and 2012 that no one really cared about. But even they weren't fully shut down, just rebranded as DICE Los Angeles and worked as a support studio for Battlefield, where they've done an amazing job cleaning up DICE's games after launch.
But BioWare has Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and now Anthem. Major games with huge fanbases unlike any of the studios EA has closed down. They're one of their tentpole studios alongside DICE and whoever makes their sports games. For them to close down BioWare would be to actually cut off one of their whole limbs, rather than just a finger or toe. Compared to Visceral, Danger Close, or any of the other studios that got closed down in the past, BioWare is leagues above that, and they'd sooner restructure the company than shut it down entirely.
