Biowar
Companies will shut down profitable branches simply because they aren’t as profitable as they were pitched to management, or as profitable as the competition. From a capitalist economic theory standpoint, they can argue that they are losing “opportunity cost”, but the difference between opportunity cost and reality is the difference between a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and a doubloon in your pocket. When leprechauns are your financial advisors, you’ve got problems.
In related news, it seems that the TORtanic is continuing its steady sinking. They try to pass off the downsizing as business as usual, but they forget that the internetubes have a long memory and we remember when they said:
Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content.
Uh-huh
They should have made KOTOR3 with co-op instead. I would have bought that.
I now wonder if Bioware will eventually suffer the same fate as many of the other companies that EA bought. To paraphrase:
The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Game companies rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished. Bioware is not the first. By utilizing our funding, game companies develop along the paths we desire. They exist because we allow it, and will end because we demand it.
The Bioware EA bought made Mass Effect 3 and contributed staff to Dragon Age 2. Bioware Austin isn't even in the same country as those developers, and is mostly composed of people with WAR, DAoC, and SWG on their resumes. Don't let EA's shameless use of Bioware as a publishing label confuse you.