God dam-
EA and Microsoft do I hate much passion with, why must they buy every freaking thing.
I can't speak for EA, as I've never worked there, although some of my coworkers have. But I can say that Microsoft does care a lot about the quality of games we make, which is why they invested money into acquiring Ensemble. Having worked elsewhere, and it's rather refreshing to be honest, there are a lot of publishers / owners of game studios who care a LOT less about the quality of the games than Microsoft does, believe me. IMO being under the MS umbrella is a good thing, because we can worry more about making awesome games that everyone wants to play and less about do we have the money to finish this project.