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EA's Quarterly Profits Down 31%
On the heels of announced layoffs, Electronic Arts reported reduced profits for the just-ended quarter. From the Gamespot article: "Whether the layoffs propped up EA's stock is debatable, as its share price lost over 2 percent of its value, $1.18. Trading was heavy indeed--twice normal volume, in fact, with 7.3 million shares changing hands. And no wonder: Shortly after the US markets closed, EA announced its earnings for its third fiscal quarter, which ran from October to December 2005. Besides being of great import to stockholders in the world's biggest third-party publisher, the report was seen by many as being a bellwether of the game industry's overall health."
Their profits tanked, because their 'biggest' christmas title, Godfather, was delayed. Apparently it was so buggy and incomplete that even EA could not hash together a shippable build in time for holidays, and now it's been pushed back to late spring.
One 'major' title is easily 20-30% of their bottom line in a quarter.
Now the reason why they aren't improving otherwise is because they treat their customers like shit, and are ran by clueless idiots that chase the quick buck over long-term sales and customer loyalty - bit like every other megacorp on the planet.
It was a short lived space MMORPG Bret Sperry wanted to do partialy because of his addiction to Everquest at the time (the man had 4 PCs he played the Evercrack on that I heard about during the 15 year aniversary party). I however know of NO connection to the C&C Universe & Earth & Beyond and I worked at Westwood up till a few months near "The End." Wiki below...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_%26_Beyond
Well C&C: Generals was not done by real Westwood Employees (Las Vegas), but the Irvine office EA got when they bought Westwood from Virgin (they were Virgin Interactive...theres some bad blood there). Westwood Las Vegas died and the Irvine office got to do Generals. They also did Red Alert: 2 and Yuris Revenge, but they did a good job on those though. If your looking for some more of that beautiful Westwood quality RTS look no further than Petroglyph Studios (Ex-WW Las Vegas Employees) who are doing Star Wars: Empire at War and damn is it beautiful. http://www.petroglyphgames.com/games/starwars.php