Slashdot Mirror
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."
I looked forward to playing Madden on my PSP. Which turned out to be one of the buggiest games ever released. The game crashed repeatedly and the load times were unbearable. It would even tease you and make you think that the load times were over at some points. Now, the load times are mostly Sony's fault(UMD is slow), but the crashing of the game was inexcusable and I stopped playing this after the first night I owned it.
I blame the internet on dodgy game releases now that require constant patching, playing games 10 years ago the titles did have their problems, but they were no where near as buggy as they are these days, it seems like developers know they can release titles with bugs & expect the general public to do their testing so they can patch the holes later.
Im not looking forward to the PS3 with online, I buy a console because I know I won't have to worry about game patching, it looks likes thats all about to change.I just hope the sony online service doesn't charge a service fee for me to update buggy games.
I gave up playing BF2 a while back because of all the problems I had with it: crashes, poor performance, lag, bugs. When I heard about the paid expansions I vowed to never go back to the game again. Wizards of the Coast etc. have been getting away with that kind of crap for years, I won't support it in video games as well.
In five years of console gaming I haven't had to suffer a single bug - why should PC gamers put up with it?
You left out they have already planned a third expansion pack, there have only been two or three patches for the game since release!