"This is a great fit," said EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst. "Criterion offers us studio talent and a proven management team, globally recognized intellectual property and technology infrastructure that will accelerate our readiness on the next generation of consoles."

EA places a strategic priority on creating games with a set of tools and libraries that are shared among its studios. RenderWare and RenderWare4 - currently under development for next generation consoles - will be combined with EA's technology to create a common framework for development. EA also plans to continue licensing the middleware technology to other developers.