Slashdot Mirror
EA As The Next Disney
ducomputergeek writes "There is an article over at Business2.0.com about how EA may just surpass Disney as the number #1 media company in the world. Considering that EA has turned out some great games over the years, including Wing Commander, many sports games for consoles, and the SIMS, it wouldn't surprise me."
Is EA really that big? I mean disney seems to own or have their fingers in just about all media. EA just doesn't seem as prevalent.
Also does anyone know how much the Sim's helped EA out? or did Maxis make most of the money off that?
You mean, some great games were turned out by companies that EA syphoned up...e.g. wing commander was produced _before_ EA bought Origin.
Maybe if Disney gets knocked from the top spot, they'd realize that they need to work harder on producing good media. It seems to me that the quality of their stuff has been dropping horribly. They did a great job of making things based off of classic material, but some of the stuff they relase that isn't is simply bad, in my opinion.
It's not just EA, they really are the 'Disney' of the gaming world, buying up anyone and everyone who comes along.
Chances are, whatever you're playing, the people who made it work for EA.
They have huge sway in the console world. Arguably one of the biggest reasons Dreamcast died was because EA refused to produce titles for it (because Sega had the gall to produce their own NHL/NFL/MLB games)
The sports franchises themselves are perenially the best selling games. You're average Jimmy Goober has no problem shelling out 60$ a year for the same game, with updated player rosters.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Electronic Arts always had great games... except it used to be EOA, dunno when it changed.
Ah, those fond memories of my youth... 2AM, sitting in front of my C-64, watching that EOA title screen come up... gaming all night long (in between using a 300 baud modem to contact BBS's in germany, Japan...)
I almost didn't survive the beating that resulted from one month's phone bill... almost 400$ of overseas long-distance. Twenty years ago, 400$ was, as they say, real money.
Yep, I can hear the L33T K1dd13Z now... "Shut up, pops. Go take some Bayer for yer arthritis."
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I have two friends who work at EA (two completely different locations, and neither of these people know each other).
EA works you like a dog. Everyone there hates their job. Big sexist corporate culture too. Both of my friends are women, and BOTH have had ideas stolen from them by their male manager. Fuckers.
So in that respect, yes, they are just like Disney.
Of course, the video game industry has been larger then the movie industry for a while, at least in terms of revenue. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that video games cost $50 or so for a new game, while movies cost a few dollars at the theater, and around $10-$15 for DVDs.
But still, it's interesting how the movie (and even the tiny music) industry seem to be much more newsworthy and important then the video game industry. Aside from game specific press... the game industry gets about as much ink as the logging industry or something. Its weird.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...all they have to do is create several dozen movies that are regarded as classics for generations, open a couple theme parks, buy a handful of movie and television companies... They should be done by Q2 2003.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I remember seeing an ad in a gaming magazine...aboutr '86 or so...
black and white, with about 8 developers on it..each talking about games they had programmed...Archon, stuff like that...
that was EA, as I recall....on one hand...kewl they've succeeded...on the other hand, they were once a blatently geek programming company...kind of a bumber...but it was kewl...
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Oh c'mon now!
Treasure Planet will turn things around!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
EA is not quite there yet!!
"it's almost absurd to compare a $2 billion software maker with a $25 billion diversified media giant.
If you are reading it... chances are, Disney is aware of the same information.
money Gordon hints could be used to expand into movies or music. In any event, Probst is clearly way beyond thinking of EA as merely a creator of software toys. "Our goal," he says with no hint of self-consciousness, "is to become the greatest entertainment company ever.
So, given the quoted valuation differences, and EA's stated goal, my question is.. how hard would it be for Disney to make EA an "offer they can't refuse"?
Maybe the next version of Sim City is going to include a big fat Epcot Center monument!!
Woa, that's really weird. Disney owns ABC, makes (er copies) tons of movies every year, releases so many old movies every year from the "Disney vaults", owns and operates several multi-million (billion on some?) theme parks and recreation centers, etc, etc, etc
Yeah EA picked up Wing Commander in about 1997-ish, it was Origin before that.
Just checked my original box to make sure that the Kilrathi saga is the first one I've got that has the EA logo on it, the earlier ones are all Origin.
I remember Archon. I remember saying that Activision and EA were the ones along with Sierra that could really go all the way. I liked the Atari computer too so I was not all right and everything.
The game industry is taking over. The media conglomerates are going to keep messing around and ticking off consumers and playing politics. One day the suckers will turn around and realize no one is just dumb watching anymore. They are all playing.
Most of the time I would rather play a good computer or console game than watch tv. There are still some good movies out there for sure, but I would rather play a good game than watch a bad movie. The media guys have to realize they are not the only game in town anymore. Yes, BTW, there are plenty of bad games too just the industry is growing by leaps and bounds.
ACK
Electronic Arts won't be the next DisneyCo until EA starts lobbying to the United States Congress for copyright laws that further restrict consumers and other authors and publishers. Look how much money DisneyCo contributed to get the Bono Act passed in a desperate attempt to keep Mickey Mouse locked up.
Will I retire or break 10K?
EA has made 1.5 billion in revenue last year, and reaped 100 million wingwangs this year alone. you can read about it here. the scale of their sports franchise alone is staggering: with tens of millions of clams being spent for marketing their sports games this year!
you might think of EA churning out craptastic games that leave you consistently overwhelmed, but the truth is that there are lots of people out there playing their console games. i mean, people i normally don't associate with, like, you know. people who play sports. and exercise. and stuff. physical exertion. pull-ups. push-ups. i dunno. i'm outta my league here now. but you know, like, THOSE people. the meatheads.
they like EA games.
and there are lots of meatheads out there.
me? i prefer more academic pursuits. if EA came out with a game like Madden for people like me, i'd give them a lot o my coin. say, instead of Madden, they had Fiercesome Librarian 2003. or Raging Geeks League Slide Rule Competition '02 (RGL '02).
but nooooo. they did their market research and realized that these sports fans can beat people like me-- the people who program these games, up. so they make stuff to appease them.
and it's gotten them a lot of moolah!
why, i remember loading up Racing Destruction Set on my c64, and watching the big square/circle/triangle change colors. i also remember modifying my 1541 drive with JiffyDos, which was a small add-on cache for the drive. SUPER LOAD TIMES!
i'm rambling. the point i'm trying to make is that yes, EA really is that big. and they're getting bigger. the sports nuts/meatheads control the market. and their population grows! fellow slashdotter, you know how always find yourself at home, alone, on friday nights? that's cause all the HAWT chix0rz are out getting their mack on, and their clothes off, with the big burly men who buy EA Sports games.
CITIZENS OF SLASHDOT! SCREW THE RIAA! SCREW THE MPAA!
FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON EA!
WORK HARD! GET MUSCLES!
AND TOGETHER WE CAN SCORE TEH HAWT CHIX0RZ!
If this keeps up "Mickey Mouse" might end up meaning cheap and unreliable. Wouldn't want that to happen! ;^)
Ryan Fenton
I hate EA already. I can't remember the last time they've produced a game i liked, but i can give you multiple recent instances where they bought a company that made games i really liked-- and then ran that company into the ground, preventing them from making more games i like.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I hope not. I recently came back from disneyland - and I must say - what a rip-off farce that place is. It is nothing but corporate marketing and a store with the very thin veil of a theme park.
Space Mountain - Brought to you by FedEX.
Star Tours - brought to you by Energizer.
and many many others. (problem is that Disneyland has very few actual rides - go to great america, far far far better place)
The place was terrible - an army of strollers and every ride practically exits you into a store of some sort.
I bought a single piece of Pizza and a water - and that was $10.00 - I had to get a sweatshirt because it was freezing, and my wife really wanted to see the parade, $60.00. A disney cup, $10.00. The same Lego Pieces you can buy at lego.com were literally twice the price. 9.99 for a 3 man starwars set rather than the 4.99 I paid for the same set online. All of this on top of the $45.00 per person we paid to get in (and mind you that this is only for the TRADITIONAL disney SIDE of the park - if you wanted to go to both California Adventure AND Disneyland, well that'll be $90.00 Buddy, thats per ticket.)
If EA turns out to be anything like Disney - I will certainly boycott them. The only reason we went was because my wife had never been there before.
Once a lifetime is enough, go when you are 5 or 6 and never again (unless you are forced to take your kids - which I would recommend against)
Fuck Disney - they dont represent anything but corporate greed and the fact that the consumer is justa number with a pocketbook full of money that the arebent on liberating you from.....
Hey guys, how quickly we forget our video gaming history! Wing Commander was made by Origin (anyone recall that "Lord British" guy?), which was, sadly, gobbled up by EA.
Even if Disney's Treasure Planet does rake in some dough late into its theatrical release, or if it sells exceptionally well on DVD and VHS, DisneyCo is in danger of losing two of its cash cows: the copyright on Mickey Mouse (© 1928 Disney) and the USA copyright on Winnie the Pooh (© 1925 Milne, licensed exclusively to Disney).
While you're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on whether or not to free the mouse, you can civil disobey right now.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I once read a very well respected Japanese developer said (I think it was Yuji Naka) [Some companies]"...make games at the desk." He was refering to game companies making games to make money, not to create something fun to play.
Electronic Arts is in the video game industry making sound business moves and producing disposable rubbish for an eager consumer base. They are no longer Electronic Artists and they no longer make great video games. This shows in the huge amount of crap they spew out each year.
Other companies were getting to be guilty of the same thing, but they seem to have realized it and are trying to make a turn for the better. Capcom, for instance, has pledged a shift towards quality and innovation, and shortly afterwards announced 6 new fairly unique looking titles.
3DO claims to be making a similar shift, and has cancelled many projects to focus on a few unique titles. Trip Hawkins even forked over his own personal money to help fund the company further along. How many CEOs do you know of who would do that? (Well, the President of Sega did that, too, then died shortly afterwards.)
Many of the more respectable publishers and developers are making this shift towards quality, but Electronic Arts openly clings to "tried and true" titles, even if it means saturating the market with crap.
I don't rant about it like I used to. I just stopped buying the shit. After all, there are other great video game developers out there.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
EA is and owns:
EA (Medal of Honor, The Sims, 007:Nightfire..)
EA Sports (most every officially liscensed sports game)
Maxis (SimCity, SimEarth,...)
Origin Systems (Ultima series, Wing Commander, Privateer)
Bullfrog Productions (Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital)
Westwood Studios (all the Command and Conquer)
Now you add in all the studios:
Austin, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Irvine, Walnut Creek, Orlando, Vancouver, Tokyo, London
the co-publishing agreements:
Crave Entertainment
Digital Extremes
Digital Illusions
Disney Interactive
Fox Interactive
Krome Studios
LEGO Interactive
Pseudo Interactive
Sunflowers Interactive
affiliated label agreements:
Capcom
Delphine
Fox Interactive
LucasArts
NovaLogic
SquareSoft
This more or less means that they are the biggest game company out there, and have the foot in the door everywhere, even Disney.
All this stuff comes from a few sources, a lot of it is out of their legal documentation.
Like most interesting journalism, this is largely wishful thinking. EA will need to prove it's more than just a game company to become the player it wants to be. The company is largely beholden to other media companies for its content (LOTR game, James Bond game, Harry Potter game) and sports games are really a dime a dozen. Only The Sims has long-term promise as a stand-alone franchise... and once they try to make a Sims movie (and you know they will!) that will be the end of it. (Anyone remember the Wing Commander movie? Still trying to forget it, huh...)
But really, EA needs to look beyond gaming if it really wants to challenge Disney or any other major media concern. Sure, it's a powerhouse in the gaming world, but my mother's never heard of Electronic Arts, while she sure as hell knows who Disney is.
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To avoid any misinformation, Chris Roberts was the mind behind Wing Commander, not Lord British. The wing commander series was way ahead of its time. I remember begging my parents back in 1990 for an 8 meg upgrade for my Compaq 286 in order to get enough "expanded memory" to play wing commander. It was really the event that got me interested in the nuts and bolts of computers. Back then you had to play around with config.sys and autoexec.bat files in order to play memory intensive dos games. BTW, that 8 meg upgrade cost $700.
Another aspect of sports games is that they are very capital intensive due to licensing and the amount of statistical data. This prevents any small upstart from coming out with a noteworthy competitor.
Loyalty amongst sports game fans is another factor, people who have played madden for the last 10 years are not going to switch to NFL2K3. EA has made the wise decision to release their sports games for just about every platform. One other plus for the sports game genre is that it appeals to the growing market of older gamers.
Wing Commander means the original game, plus Wing Commander 2 and the first Privateer game. All the rest were just endless video sequences with some short and repetitive gameplay between them. They weren't even described as games, the box said "interactive CD-ROM movie".
For a couple of years before being bought by EA, Origin really did create worlds. They made some of the best games of all times (Ultima 7, Wing Commander, Privateer, Underworld). Same goes for Bullfrog, and many other companies swallowed up by EA (I doubt Maxis will ever make another original game; they will just keep releasing Sims add-ons with more and more advertising). EA seems to have the Midas touch with a twist: all the gold it touches turns into crap.
Oh well, as long as they make some gold out of companies' last breaths, I guess the shareholders will be happy.
RMN
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