When hearing about a huge video game company merger now-a-days, most gamers would probably assume that EA had gobbled up yet another high potential developer. This time, however, they?d be wrong. Top independent developers Pandemic and BioWare have married their companies recently in order to stay indie and still make creative, fun games for fans of both corporations to enjoy. With sales combined, BioWare and Pandemic have sold well over 25 million copies of their games and have made approximately $800 million in revenue. Greg Zeschuk, joint CEO of BioWare, is quoted as saying, ?A lot of people are asking us if we?re trying to become a publishing company. Our perspective is there are a lot of great publishers out there. Frankly, we work with a lot of them. You and the fans know BioWare and Pandemic as great developers. This [merger] allows us to continue doing what we?re doing- in a way no one in the industry has done before.? Andrew Goldman, CEO of Pandemic had this to add, ?The important note here is that we are still an independent developer. We can work with anybody. We?re now definitively independent.?

As far as some of the hard details about the partnership go, private equity firm Elevation Partners is overseeing the merger. Together the developers have over 400 employees. This deal makes BioWare/Pandemic studios one of the largest independent developers in the industry. The co-founders of each of the two studios will become senior executives and shareholders of the united companies. Both establishments will still remain true to their own style. Pandemic will continue to make excellent action games, while BioWare continues to focus on top quality RPGs.

So far, no new intellectual properties have been announced as a collaboration from the newly formed company. Future next generation titles like [i]Mass Effect[/i] and [i]Dragon Age[/i] have not been affected by the merger and are still on schedule. Andrew Goldman had these comments about future games, ?The big question is how we can leverage each other?s experience to push forward what our fans love. This is a tremendous opportunity for us to look at what each other does and improve and deliver better games to our fans through that.? Greg Zeschuk added, ?We haven?t really worked out together what we?ll do jointly. The first thing we?re doing is building those bridges between companies. That?s actually the second answer: the chance to collaborate on IPs together, on game designs together; the concept of actually sharing what we do well with each other. . . More immediately, we?re focused on getting to know each other really well and get those relationships in place.?

This is great news for fans of video games that dislike the apparent monopoly that companies such as EA and Sony seemingly have on the business. To reassure their fans Zeschuk said, ?We want to make more great games, and play more great games, and, this is the way to do that.? And Goldman also added, ?The independent developers who have the passion for creating something spectacular for you are remaining independent, and are going to continue to do what they?ve done on a larger scale.? Lastly, joint CEO of BioWare Corp., Ray Muzyka had these thoughts, ?In a business where developers often must sell out to survive, this deal is refreshingly new: a partnership of equals.?

Make sure to stay with Mygamer.com as new details emerge.