Electronic Arts - Resistance Is Futile?

Thanks to USNews.com for its feature discussing the increasing dominance of videogame publisher Electronic Arts, pointing out that, using figures from its recent financial results, that: "In 1999, EA had eight platinum, or million-plus-selling, titles. In the past year, it produced 27 of them. Back then, EA possessed 10 percent of the North American game market. Today, it has captured 22 percent of it." The article discusses EA's wish "to double the size of the company every four or five years", and also talks about revenues from online gaming, where it's hoped "some 15 to 20 percent of EA revenue should come from... during the next console cycle", despite the "costly failure" of The Sims Online - however, EA CEO Larry Probst "...guesses that future online gaming will follow the cable television model, where you will pay a subscription to access various 'channels' of gaming services"),

Comments

Bigger is easier

[Tyggyr]

Budgets are getting bigger. Development times are longer. Teams are (much) bigger. Licenses are more expensive. Game complexities are bigger.

As long as those trends continue, and they likely will, EA is one of a vanishingly small number of publishers that can fund a significant number of high-end titles. Few publishers seem able to increase their hit rate, so they need to ship several titles annually in hopes of scoring big.

It'll take an order of magnitude improvement in development tools before the smaller guys can compete at this level. And unfortunately the tools developers haven't stepped up to the plate yet.

Look for more consolidation over the next 3-5 years. It's going to get much harder for the little guy before things start to shift again.

EA's only real danger is its own weight.

Re:Bigger is easier

[nelsonal]

This is very similar to Hollywood's maturity from the 30s and 40s to modern day. In the early days of movies, there were lot's of studios and movies were cranked out because they were cheap to produce. Later as budgets became larger, the more successful studios began buying up the smaller studios until only a few big distribution comapnies exist today. As video game budgets increase similar things will happen. Of course, just as Blair Witch gets made for a few thousand there will be occasional game titles that catapult new developers to the big leagues, but they will more than likely do it with the assistance of one of the bigger names.

Re:Bigger is easier

[cujo_1111]

Does that mean the number of blockbuster summer release crap games will increase as the industry 'matures'?

I damn well hope not.

EA's Law

[schnits0r]

"size of the company doubles every four or five years" (See. Moore's Law)

No original thoughts out of Probst or EA.

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for EA for about 3 years. I worked for Kesmai (Legends of Kesmai, Air Warrior, et. al.) for about 5 years before EA bought them.

The "cable tv" model of online gaming pricing isn't any new idea. It's been discussed for at least as long as I've been in the industry. The latest incarnation of it is SOE's "basket" pricing. The biggest (and probably fatal) flaw with the idea is that people don't have the time or inclination to learn or play more than

It's funny that the financials hint at EA wanting ~12% of their revenues to be from online gaming. It's alost pretty funny to see that they only mention The Sims Online as a failed online albatross around their necks. Here's a more complete list: * EA.com - the entire service failed * Majestic - Rumored $9M+ to make. Shut down less than 2 months after launch. * Motor City Online - showed such promise too * Earth & Beyond * TSO - I just don't see how it will ever turn a profit. * UO2 - stillborn The only success EA has had in the pay-to-play online space is Ultima Online. They had Air Warrior with 40K+ paying users dev costs on the running version paid for. They killed it (supposedly) because 40K wasn't good enough. EA.com games were all going to run 100K users. Except for UO they've *never* come close to hitting that goal with a game.

EA can crank out the Madden year after year. They can crank out movie license games too. They know how to do that. They haven't shown that they have any institutional knowledge of the online space, though.

Re:No original thoughts out of Probst or EA.

[Anonymous Coward]

They also killed Privateer Online, Battletech 3025 (MMP Battletech anyone?), and a whole host of other titles. Many of these cancellations were accompanied by the associated teams being laid off. Being a part of EA rapidly came to mean dreading the first quarter of the fiscal year. March is almost always EA's layoff month. It appears that the foolishness of laying off an entire team at one whack hasn't dawned on them yet. Much of their competition in the MMP space (and other markets) has come from ex-EA employees. The Privateer Online team wound up becoming the Star Wars Galaxies team for SOE. The Ultima Online 2 team comprises a large chunk of the developers over at NCsoft Austin working on Richard Garriot's next game, Tabula Rasa. ION Storm Austin recruited much of it's talent from EA layoff's. As did Digital Anvil and Wolfpack studios.

EA's bumbling in the MMP market is often amusing, however, as they can't seem to grasp that it takes longer than a year to produce a MMP product of any worth. On top of that, they seem eternally frustrated by the continued success of the now ancient Ultima Online. EA wants and expects to have 6 month to a year product cycles. To have a game live on for 7 years drives them a bit batty. Not only are they dumb as fence posts when it comes to the MMP market, but they don't listen to those of their employees that have been there before and repeat mistakes made with previous products.

They also tend to be total jerks. When UO: Third Dawn was coming out, they had just laid off the UO2 team (I forget if Kesmai was shutdown that March or the next) and when speaking to the survivors they were asked if the Origin name and logo were going away (it had certainly felt like that for a while). The CEO asked what the employees thought and everyone vehemently expressed their desire to keep the OSI name and logo. At this, he stated that he had a strong belief in the employees of OSI and would make certain that the OSI name and logo continued to exist. Then the Ultima Online: Third Dawn retail boxes were handed out to everyone. No Origin logo...anywhere. No mention of OSI as an entity, studio, nothing. Except in the fine print of the license agreement. Plenty of EA logos everywhere, though (actually EA.com, the bizzare, doomed to failure enterprise that was to be structured around magically converting the 1.5 million unique visitors of Pogo.com, which they had just bought for around $150 million, into $10 a month EA.com subscribers). No subsequent product would ever carry the Origin name. Just this last March, EA shutdown the Origin studio in Austin.

Of the great PC gaming companies of the 90's, EA has taken over and slowly strangled to death Bullfrog, Westwood, Origin, Kesmai, and Maxis among a number of other smaller companies.

Size doubles every 4.5 years?

[-kertrats-]

2004: 22% 2008: 44% 2013: 88% 2017: 176% 2022: 352% 2026: ??? 2031: PROFIT!

they are a virus

[Anonymous Coward]

EA buys out companies, assimilates them into their huge pile of crap, then has those companies produce cheap crappy sequals to the companies previously awsome franchise, thus producing a "platinum" game, but in the process running that brand name into the ground. Then EA moves on and does it to another company and another franchise

(yes I'm bitter about how westwood studios went down the pipe after EA bought them)

Question for Probst

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me ask Probst this:
Would Arcades have been as successful in the 80's if they charged a membership fee instead of a quarter per play??