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EA Aiming For 50% Innovation

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-half-care dept.

Talking to 'The Street.com' EA Worldwide Studios president Paul Lee gets grilled on game delays and industry stagnation, and reaffirms EA's commitment to new IP. From the article: "There [have] been countless games in our industry that have looked great and didn't play particularly well. Going forward, there's going to be a lot of me-too products that look great -- because they all look great -- that aren't necessarily going to do great. But if you take a look at what we have -- you know, Spore is innovative game-play, and at the same time it's got great graphics. And I think that's what really knocks it out of the park. Innovative game-play helps drive [the cause] of gaming. And if you can do that, and you can have great graphics, I think that the market is bigger than just having one of the two."

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. You had me reading at Spore by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 4, Interesting

    but when I RTFA I found he mostly talked about how he was sinking a lot of resources into Sony and Microsoft, which means they may have missed the boat since all of my peeps are buying the Wii when it comes out.

    It's the games. Seriously, I don't care how the investors think about it. I was looking at investing in EA or Nintendo, but after reading this I just don't think they get it and will miss the wave that will dominate gaming for the next two years.

    I'll still buy Spore and other Will Wright projects, of course.

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  2. It's not the games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    but when I RTFA I found he mostly talked about how he was sinking a lot of resources into Sony and Microsoft,

    What EA's core competency really is, is that they turned software from a high-tech endeavour to a manufacturing practice - and run their software manufacturing plants in much the same way that apparel and auto makers run their manufacturing plants.

    By taking this approach, EA can make more cames for the same investment - and even if they're not the best games, they're good enough for many people in much the same way a Honda is good enough compared to a BMW.

    I expect EA will have *great* innovaton in business partnerships with Sony and MSFT and *great* innovation in union-busting and pushing the edge of labor laws - and a continued track record of almost no innovation in games. And their shareholders will be happy for it.

    Innovations like "Vista DRM will only activate certain Direct-X-11-features for EA games" could be an incredible innovation for MSFT DRM as a reference customer and EA as a competitive advantage.

    Please remember everyone there's a big difference between Innovating and Inventing -- Microsoft's a master at the former but sucks at the latter -- and EA aspires to do so as well.