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The Horrible Things That Could Happen To EA
A recent Gamasutra story noted something interesting in Electronic Arts' financials filing. The company is extremely reliant on brick and mortar retailers like Wal-mart (which made up 12% of its net revenue) and Gamestop (about 15%). Simon Carless, writing at the GameSetWatch blog, takes that analysis one step further and postulates some of the horrible things that could happen to the software giant if the conditions were right. It's all meant tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it's an interesting discussion of how even large companies can be vulnerable to simple issues: "5. Wrong System, Wrong Time! 'Our business is highly dependent on the success and availability of video game hardware systems manufactured by third parties, as well as our ability to develop commercially successful products for these systems.' More specifically, as EA explains, this is the Wii/DS effect in action: 'A platform for which we are developing products may not succeed or may have a shorter life cycle than anticipated.'"
other companies producing NFL games!?
oh the humanity!
start pumping out repetitive franchise sports titles and make tons of money off of gullible people who blindly buy brand names. Oh, wait. . .
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
They sink a lot of time and effort into developing games for the Phantom platform.
They get purchase by SOE, and then have to try to sell games with both SOE and EA on the box.
The best and brightest decide to take their chances, jump ship and start their own company.
John Madden cancels the licensing agreement, and we have to have Marv Albert NFL.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Are they trying extortion now to get some originality in the sports titles?
"Sure is a nice game company you got there. It's be a shame if something happened to Gamestop, or WalMart. People forget, shipments don't get ordered, all sorts of things happen..."
A game companies financial success is dependent on selling GAMES in STORES!
Big FOX =^,^= What do you mean it's broken? I fixed it yesterday!