Well, there you go, it's the biggest games industry news item of the year so far: EA has bought Criterion. The number one middleware maker now belongs to the number one developer / publisher.

What does it all mean?

GamesIndustry.biz has interviewed both Criterion's David Lau-Kee and EA's Bruce McMillan to find out what they think.

I'm sure many people will be discussing this for quite some time. I will update this post as new commentary comes in.

Update: Apparently this deal cost EA around $48 million, which seems pretty low to me. (Microsoft paid $375 million for Rare.)