Oh boy, no-one saw this coming. In a move that is likely to dominate the week, Business Wire have sent out word that Electronic Arts are pushing forward nicely with their world domination plan and have bought Bioware Corp. and Pandemic Studios. Keep the tears rolling, there’s more after the break.

EA have paid Elevation Partners $620 million in order to snatch up VG Holding Corp., which owns both Bioware and Pandemic Studios. On top of this, they will also payout $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., which will be subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. EA will also take control of VG Holding Corp.’s stock options. Also, EA has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to $35 million through the closing of the acquisition. The press release states Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp. employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin; and Brisbane, Australia.

John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer was delighted with the acquisition:

“These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I’m glad to be working with them again. They’ll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties. We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”

Josh Resnick, President and Co-founder of Pandemic Studios, had this to say:

“Pandemic Studios remains focused on attracting the best talent and creating blockbuster action games. As a worldwide publishing leader, EA represents the ideal partner to bring our titles to market as global entertainment events.”

And Ray Muzyka, Co-founder and CEO of BioWare Corp. gives Bioware’s view:

“We are truly excited by John Riccitiello’s new vision for EA. This vision is consistent with BioWare’s focus on crafting the highest quality story-driven games in the world. It will enable us to further the careers of the passionate, creative and hard working teams at BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin.”

Pandemic Studios are known for such titles as Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Battlefront II, Destroy All Humans! and Mercenaries. As we all know, Mercenaries 2 is currently in production, so it will be interesting to see what happens now.

As for Bioware, everyone in the Xbox world has heard of Mass Effect, and with news spreading recently that Bioware want a trilogy of the game this generation, EA have enough experience about them to make sure that this definitely becomes a reality.

To remain as neutral as possible, we will leave it up to you in the comments to provide some thoughts about this.

Thanks to Jonah Falcon for submitting.