EA to acquire Real Racing, Flight Control dev Firemint

EA announced a deal to acquire casual games developer Firemint today, the studio behind Real Racing and Flight Control. The acquisition is to be complete within four weeks.

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EA announced today that it has entered an agreement to acquire Firemint, the developer behind casual hits like Real Racing and Flight Control. The deal is set to close within four weeks, and financial details were not disclosed in the announcement. While Firemint has mostly focused on iPhone and iPad titles, it ported Flight Control to the PS3 and DS.

"The Firemint team is remarkable for its critical and commercial success," said EA Interactive general manager Barry Cottle in the announcement. “Having them as part of EAi will accelerate our position as worldwide leader in game development for mobile devices and online gaming platforms.”

This is part of EA's growing effort to capitalize on the mobile and social games market. The company has already acquired a few developers, such as Playfish and Mobile Post Production. EA's John Schappert, credited with the push into the social games market, recently left EA to join their biggest competitor in the social games space, Zynga.

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    May 3, 2011 11:15 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, EA to acquire Real Racing, Flight Control dev Firemint.

    EA announced a deal to acquire casual games developer Firemint today, the studio behind Real Racing and Flight Control. The acquisition is to be complete within four weeks.

    • reply
      May 3, 2011 2:14 PM

      It sucks when big publishers start buying up small developers.
      Just look at what happened to Bioware.

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        May 4, 2011 3:57 AM

        haha. Did Mass Effect 1 & 2 not achieve grand success? Dragon Age Origins sold well and received great reviews. Dragon Age 2 sold over a million copies despite the average reviews.

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          May 4, 2011 4:20 AM

          At the same time, it probably kills all possibility of Bioware making a game resembling Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights. Some will say "That game style is dead anyway!"; others will disagree.

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            May 4, 2011 5:22 AM

            It's not just that it kills their chances of making BG games, it kills their chances of making anything but games that are like other, existing games. I enjoyed both the Mass Effects, but no one can accuse these games of any level of originality. Taking 20-odd Gears of War levels, dressing them like Halo, and then letting the player pick which ones he plays three at a time is not really a crazy off the wall new experience, at least not for me.

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              May 4, 2011 7:51 PM

              I haven't played a crazy off the wall new experience in RPG for a long time or for many other genre's of games at the moment.

              Bioware making a BG game after being bought by EA could have some issues. If it doesn't live up to expectations we would accuse EA of killing Bioware. If it was very good but wasn't anything "new" some might accuse EA of being unoriginal.

              I like Mass Effect so I won't say Bioware's acquisition was bad for gamers. Westwood on the other hand...

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      May 3, 2011 11:31 PM

      Does this mean Infinite Interactive aren't going to do a new pc puzzle quest game?

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      May 3, 2011 11:31 PM

      Flight Control HD came out on Steam also.

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