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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.'"
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
That's true of all 3rd party software developers on all games consoles. And all operating systems in fact. And all products in fact, it's not limited to IT. A company that makes after-market parts for a Ford is relying on Ford not releasing a model that's a dismal failure.
Too many people think there's some mysterious difference between computers and everything else. There isn't.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
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..."
How about their customers quitting because of the poor games quality. When I got C&C3, I was very impressed. It ran great and rather bug-free (there was one mission that would lock up on completion, even after patching, but a reinstall fixed that so it could have been corrupt data on my network install).
Lately, however, I have been trying out online play. Bugs everywhere. If an opponent lags out, you can kick them, but then the whole game is frozen without resuming. It's so bad that while you can chat with other players still, you can't move units, and even the quit buttons etc cease to function (CTRL+ALT+DEL is needed). Numerous other netplay bugs have abounded, and overall the experience is tainted by nasty lag and general flakiness. Many people on there are extremely ticked with EA, and have stated that unless fixes are found soon they're not going to be buying any future products.
Clearly the Wii/DS effect refers to the last part that was left out of the summary. If they were talking about products that may not succeed, that would be the Dreamcast effect.
EA is riding that fine line between stagnation and paranoia, and if things do not change, they will be killed by the realities of human interest.
How long can they sell the same sports titles before people get bored with them? There WILL come a point when those tired games will run out of steam.
The Sims and The Sims 2 have been doing very well because they do NOT focus on the 13-23 year old male obsession with violence in games. EA does not learn why things work and do not work, so we see less innovation as they lean more and more on sequels that are "more of the same".
EA just bought Bioware, probably in the hopes that Bioware will be able to break them free of the looming stagnation, but their bad habit of buying a company because "it is different" and then screwing it up and turning the newly purchased company into an extension of what is wrong with EA may kill the value.
The game industry needs to learn from the movie industry, where art and special effects need to be combined to produce a real hit. Games that are only about violence, or sex, or horror by themselves may cater to a niche market, but true blockbusters come from a combination of different elements. The industry in general does NOT use a combination of these elements, so does not cater to a broader audience.
There is also a basic concept that seems to have escaped most game developers, and that is the majority of game players are over the age of 18, yet most games target teenagers. This means that most games do not appeal to the older players, and over time sales will decline.
In short, yes, I would still complain. Spore is only being allowed to happen at all because Will Wright is one of the biggest names in the game industry, with proven commercial success and huge "brand recognition" (no longer really brand recognition since it's no longer Maxis, but more like genre recognition). Try to find a small development company who has ever pitched a good idea to EA as "radical" as Spore is who actually succeeded in getting the project funded.