Nearly two years ago BioWare, Pandemic and private equity firm Elevation Partners joined forces to create a "super developer." Today's news that leading publisher EA acquired BioWare and Pandemic came as a surprise to most, and it's certainly a huge boost for EA, but what does it mean for BioWare and Pandemic?

While Bungie just successfully regained its independence from Microsoft, why would BioWare/Pandemic be so willing to give theirs up? GameDaily BIZ had the opportunity to chat with executives from both companies to find out what's behind the deal. Below are the two separate Q&A sessions we conducted.

Pandemic Studios

GameDaily BIZ: So why'd you guys do it? What was so appealing about the deal that you'd relinquish your independence?

Josh Resnick: A lot of it actually has to do with John [Riccitiello] and the vision that he brought to BioWare/Pandemic originally, bringing those two companies together to help create the 'super developer' model, and it's about the vision he's bringing to EA as well. We really love working with them, and not only do we want to continue that relationship now that he's at EA, but we also want to tap into the incredible power and strength of EA's publishing organization. At the end of the day we come to work everyday at Pandemic just to make unbelievably amazing games and we want to turn those games into endearing, lasting franchises – turning them into event products. And frankly we can't think of any better partner to enable us to do that than EA. It's really about bringing the best of development together with the best on the publishing side.

Greg Borrud: We have been fiercely independent for a long time... I guess I don't really see this joining with EA as a change in that. We will still maintain that independent spirit and that ability to make the best games possible – EA just allows us to do it on a much grander scale. We're still going to be keeping our own culture, and we're still going to be developing the games that we think make us great. So even though to everyone [on the outside] it doesn't look like we're maintaining our independence, in our minds we absolutely are... and that's what John's laid out for us.

Resnick: We have the full support of John to maintain our culture and our entrepreneurial, dynamic spirit that allows us to make the kind of games that we make.

Borrud: We wouldn't even have considered this if we felt we would lose what really makes us great, which is the ability to control our own destiny, the ability to recruit top talent in the industry and give people a place that they really can call home. It's something John is passionate about and we're passionate about. We want to make sure we're a strong independent force within the larger organization of EA.

BIZ: How long was this deal in the works?

EA rep: It's been a few months in the making. These guys have a long relationship with John and have been getting to know Frank [Gibeau] better over the last few months.

Resnick: To add to that, we've had a relationship with Frank for years because as a company we've chosen EA as our partner over many products and many years, and so fortunately we're walking into two very strong, comfortable relationships in both Frank and John.

BIZ: Were you approached by other parties, like Microsoft for example? Or was this strictly a conversation between EA and BioWare/Pandemic?

Resnick: Being who we are over the last nine years, being an independent company we have these kinds of discussions all the time; so it's just part of the regular occurrence of being a developer these days. But obviously we were very excited to take the call from John and have that discussion.

BIZ: You talked about the "independent spirit" before, but as an independent developer you might have more freedom to take risks, whereas being owned by a large publisher now means they have to worry about their stockholders and they might not want to greenlight some wacky, zany ideas that Pandemic has. Are you concerned by that?

Resnick: The interesting thing is that a lot of the value that I think John and EA are placing on us is our ability to come up with what you're calling wacky original concepts.

Borrud: There are some pretty wacky things in the works. [laughs] EA as a company seems to be very focused on really investing in the growth of original IPs within their organization, and their investment and partnership with us now is a further testament to that because Pandemic has a long, rich history of making great original IPs like Mercenaries and Saboteur and we have a lot of others in the works right now. I'd actually say the opposite [to your question] – EA is very supportive of that creative thinking that's embodied in who we are as a company right now.

BIZ: EA has been a fairly strong supporter of the Wii and DS. Does the IP from Pandemic lend itself to those platforms, which are more for a family-friendly kind of audience?

Borrud: Even before EA we were very excited about the Nintendo platforms, so we've been developing on our own for a little while with some new titles. Obviously we're not ready to talk about what those new titles are, but the whole idea is to develop those titles specifically for those platforms. We did not want to come out with something derivative of other platforms, so we're looking at those platforms very uniquely... and saying, "We need to build games that work on these platforms." We'll have a lot more to talk about in the near future, but we're definitely excited about our plans on all the Nintendo platforms.

BIZ: Right, and what about Sony's PSP or other systems?

Resnick: At the end of the day we're always looking at the creativity behind the game and where that makes the most sense, and we have a very rich history as a company of being multiplatform for most of our products and we're going to continue to do that. And so where it makes sense to match our IP with a particular platform, whether it be PSP or DS or Wii or whatever, we'll continue to do that... but we'll evaluate that on a case-by-case basis.

Next page: Greg & Ray from BioWare share their thoughts on the deal and talk about the future of Mass Effect.