Well, it's only way they could stay afloat. The moment average 16 bit DAC become cheap and games stopped using builtin synths/MIDI it was over, CPUs were fast

Well, it's only way they could stay afloat. The moment average 16 bit DAC become cheap and games stopped using builtin synths/MIDI it was over, CPUs were fast enough that offloading audio was not a big deal any more and anyone could make good enough one. EAX was fun gimmick but exclusivity probably hurt the idea in the end