i.e. firing their best people from products that make money and then scale back support, while they dump truckloads of cash into products that completely bomb..
I dunno,, I gotta say, regardless of whether or not it is that close to the truth, isn't that what the games industry should be doing? Diverting resources from already successful projects in order to pursue future venues?
You're looking at UO from a success point of view.. a "guaranteed earner" - which I agree with. Loyal playerbase, keep them happy and they will keep handing money over. But EA needs to find new ways to expand to keep making money, otherwise it wouldn't be a very good business.
While I don't like many of the games EA may release, and while they may be a failure, they've published some fantastic games in the last few years and 3 of my favourites have come from Bioware developers; ME1, ME2 and Dragon Age: Origins.
Now, EA have "owned" Bioware since just before Mass Effect's release. Any money they put into projects that Bioware developers work on is a well justified risk. On the other hand, any money put into UO expansion development would need more consideration IMO.
Many former UO developers seem to be working for Bioware on non-UO projects now which is sad from the point of view "they're ours!", but I would hope that if there was any more UO expansions released that staff from other Bioware projects may be temporarily put to work on UO development, including old UO staff.
Totally unfounded idea here but I would imagine that if you had a bunch of developers working for UO and you also had a team that needed all the experienced developers you could get, it would be a good idea to get the UO developers working on your big budget projects (and theyre already being paid by you) and put them back to work on UO stuff when they're really needed.
Anyway to finish off, I think having UO in the same boat as Bioware is a good thing, as Bioware have got different IPs out there that are successful and are guaranteed to get funding. I reckon that if UO managed to get through "THE RECESSION" as everyone calls it, it can get through a developer name rebranding.