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Electronic Arts Up For Sale?
John Wagger writes "One of the world's largest gaming publishers and developers Electronic Arts has quietly put itself up for sale. While there have already been talks with private equity companies, the talks have not resulted in anything concrete. One of the sources is saying that EA would do the deal for $20 per share (currently at $14.02). Over the past year, EA's stock price has fallen 37 percent. Like other major game publishers, EA has been struggling against growing trend of social and mobile gaming."
Maybe they should have partnered and kept their products on Steam rather than trying to compete against Gabe. Lord knows I haven't played a PC game from EA since they took all their products off Steam.
anyone who plays games that use EA's "always connected" DRM are going to be screwed shortly.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
EA did not create Mass Effect. It was BioWare who did that, who EA bought (and ruined). Just look at how they ruined the Old Republic MMO and the third Mass Effect's ending which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Everything EA touches turns to shit.
> Presumably there is the back catalog; but most games don't hold their value that well over time
Uh, do you know about an effect called "the Long Tail" ?
Did you also miss all the sales Valve has on Steam or GOG has?? While old games (5+ years) may only sell for $2.99 - $9.99, there are getting to be a lot of older games that don't mind spending $4.99 to buy a legal copy of that "oldie" -- I know I certainly do as many of my steam friends. A $2.99 or $4.99 to own a classic Bullfrog game (Populous, Magic Carpet, etc.) is well worth it. Hell, sell *all* the original Ultima series.
Don't understand estimate the worth of nostalgia ... IF old games are cheap enough there will be a long trickle of "loose change" for us old geezers.
I'm most familiar with Maxis, which they bought years ago, and from what I hear it's been a long, slow, EA-style attempt to strangle their creativity and success, which eventually worked. More and more formal management, accounting for your time, meetings, etc.
Most of the good developers that used to be there have left as it got more corporate: Chris Hecker went indie (working on SpyParty), Richard Evans went indie too (since acquired by Linden Labs, working on Cotillion), Chaim Gingold went indie and then went back to grad school, etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They have lots of awesome IP, just idiot management who seems unable to execute.
I think I can attest to this.
I'm a computer scientist who's done a lot of development over the years, as well as large-scale system and network administration. A few months ago, I responded to a job posting for a senior technical position there. The fit seemed great. The description could have been summarizing my career. I spent a whole day in job interviews at EA, having already been phone interviewed with a hiring manager and the VP of the group I'd be working in. The VP and I had gotten along great. We talked about architecture and operations and what each of us saw as emerging paradigms. Before the site visit, I'd also spent a hour answering a detailed technical questionnaire and several hours writing a programming test. (I don't regret this effort: there was an interesting problem to solve and I was quite pleased with the elegance and correctness of my solution.)
But not once in the entire day of meetings was the programming test ever mentioned, much less my technical qualifications, much less anything about the position for which I'd applied. Everybody I talked to wanted to talk about management style and politics and who reports to whom and what would I do in various hypothetical management situations. I seriously thought that they'd made a mistake and scheduled the wrong candidate that day. But no, it was a case of management seeing the world exclusively in terms of management.
Apart from that stunning aspect of cognitive disjunction, the day ran very smoothly. I don't know quite how to describe the mood. It was a bit like being at Club Med or on a cruise ship or at a Las Vegas casino. Polished, courteous, competent, friendly, and yet somehow lacking. A bit soulless, a bit careful to not do or say anything even mildly distinctive or controversial. Corporate.
No surprise, they turned me down for the position, saying they were looking for someone with more of a management orientation. Yeah, well, cool. How would like to put that somewhere in your job posting? We could have all saved ourselves a lot of time. But you see, that's exactly where EA is in trouble. There's a disconnect, and it's stratified. People at the top and in the trenches think EA is one thing, but meanwhile all the middle management are having a fine time carving out turf for themselves and sniping at each other and thinking that's reality.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.