Just out of curiosity, does anyone keep track of how many great game franchises EA has killed? :/
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Too many, they killed the Command & Conquer Series (Westwood Studios)
Simcity they killed by not listening to their fan base and not caring to concerns (Maxis)
[quote who="Illauna" reply="1" id="3528151"]
This is sad news for a company that created some of my favorite games in my early years like SimCity 2000. Unfortunately, it's not unexpected. While I enjoyed some of the mechanics of Spore and SimCity. Ultimately they weren't that great because of major flaws under the sheets. RIP Maxis.
The problem with EA is they never look at the big picture. They are like so many other companies that look short term and what can we get out of something right now. Don't care about how they are going to sustain themselves years from now.
With SimCity they had so much potential there. They rushed the production, hyped the game and failed to understand the average SimCity gamer.
- They were all focused on multiplayer and didn't care about the single player aspect of the game.
- Required an Internet connection but, lied to customers on why it was needed.
- Didn't listen to customer base and limited players imaginations with small cities to smaller than SimCity 4
- Expected players of a "SimCity" game to play the game for 30 minutes and sign off.
- Tunneled all traffic through 1 or 2 connections to the map and expected that to hold traffic.
With Maxis, they obtained all of their other games that they could have expanded and grew or used synergy with the larger games.
- SimTower, never was a sequel made. There was a generic offshoot YutTower or something along those lines but wasn't widely available. I would have loved to see a modernized game of this done correctly potentially in a 3D environment. (Hint Stardock do a Mars Tower lol)
- SimEarth, This was always a fun game, although I enjoyed the SNES version more than the PC version. Again this had so much potential and I think Spore tried to take some of this to it.
- The Sims, really hasn't been playable for me since Sims 2. I've dabbled in Sims 3 but, won't buy Sims 4. Of course Sims 3 & 4 wasn't built solely by Maxis and was spun out separately, which may explain is downward trend.
- All other Sim games. People enjoyed these games through the 90's why not build off their success even though nothing compared to SimCity or the last self developed game of The Sims prior to the EA takeover.
As far as my first point with Westwood Studios. They had great potential there as well with games such as C&C and various versions through the second installments of Red Alert and C&C, as well as Dune. Once again EA was all about squeezing out the game and not about the depth and therefore I've never really played anything after Generals. (Although do own copies of the latest games that remain unplayed or less than an hour of game time.)
Overall I do own many EA games, however, the latest games dwindle on time spent on them overall compared to games created by the original Studios prior to EA's involvement or with limited EA input.
With all this being said go Stardock. Show the big boys how it's done. This opens the door for you 
Games I still hope eventually are produced.
A space SimCity type game, taking player feedback into consideration. (Many, many hours dedicated to SimCity 4)
A Tower type game, similar to SimTower. (Still play on sometimes on my 32 bit machine) [Unfortunately doesn't play on 64 bit]
Offtopic
A Railroad Tycoon type game (more involved than Offworld Trading Company [longer game]) [still play game to this day]
