Reuters says Electronic Arts is buying Bioware / Pandemic for $800 million.

I think many people saw the Bioware / Pandemic merger, with support from private equity firm Elevation Partners, as a bold move to create a large-scale independent developer.

With this news, it looks more like a fancy move by John Riccitiello, who worked at Electronic Arts, left to co-found Elevation Partners, came back to EA as CEO, and now this.

As usual, it is a bold move that makes sense for EA. I wonder how long it takes them to crush the soul of those two companies.

(Thanks, Mark!)

Update: Greg has some more in-depth analysis.