Pretty grim read on the state of EA from an executive
polycounter lvl 18
http://bizpunk.blogspot.com/2010/01/after-bell-today-ea-announced-massive.html
Definitely an interesting albeit grim read on the state of EA and it's inner thought process on operations.
Definitely an interesting albeit grim read on the state of EA and it's inner thought process on operations.
Replies
Hopefully this doesn't create more lay offs!
If CEO's and all the other 'higher ups' would take a small paycut, maybe they wouldn't have to cut back the staff as much. Keep the people who make the games great and drop the suits
Dead Space, Mirrors edge etc..
They need execs that don't rape the company coffers to line their own pockets.
They need to invest and upgrade the way their studios make games, to make more and cost less.
They need to look at where the money goes after they cut a studio the check. I suspect the same corporate structure "I get mine first" that permeates the top also saturates the studio heads and their higher ups actually robbing their games of content.
Maybe not at all studios that remain to stay some what autonomous but it probably happens enough to hurt overall production?
No one is swooping in to gobble up EA because it hasn't hit bottom yet. Why buy now when you can ride it lower and get a better deal. It's probably going to be easier to dig a few gems out of the rubble rather than trying to save EA by strapping yourself to the wrecking ball that's already in motion.
Right, but they need to start shifting toward more games like this and stop spending so much talent on there yearly games.
Mirrors edge (and I think dead space but I'm not sure) were a loss. They didn't make money.
Spore was a gigantic loss.
Unfortunately their strategy of original games is not going well for them financially. I don't see why they should continue it.
But this is entirely the point - they invested heavily in new franchises and they all sold well below expectation. I'm no EA apologist, but they have to be given some credit for trying to diversify in recent years. Mirror's Edge, Spore, Skate, Dead Space etc. were all really good games with innovative and/or ambitious content. For whatever reason, they just didn't capture the mainstream's imagination (or lack thereof) with any of these titles.
One could argue that EA started to invest in quality rather than quantity way too late in the game. They were massively complacent for a long time and content to simply milk the sports franchises dry. Now that the rights for these IPs is skyrocketing they are no longer as profitable as they once were. I guess we'll see where things go next...
The sad part is that games such as Mirror's Edge and Dead Space did not sell well and Madden/Fifa/etc. bring them much more profits.
Seems like the shit that's been amassing in that anus for years is finally coming out. I'm not speaking only about EA here; most of the publishers are victims of bad management, poor planning and budgeting. You'd think that after the bankruptcy of 3do and financial clusterfuck that Shenmue was, they would learn something. Sometimes I think that video games market has expanded too fast for its own good and its stitched together with spit and bubble gum; ready to burst in every moment.
I really hope that EA will find the way out this; never been a fan of their strategy, but I want to be as far as I can if that shit explodes. I hope that at least they will wait a few years until I find a job.
That's all in today's "The World is Ending".
Sounds like the same things that happened to the banks, people with no sense spending too much money.
Also goes to show how insanely fast things change up in this industry, a little over a year ago when I first started working under Take Two, EA was negotiating hard to acquire T2, I guess we dodged that bullet! Makes you wonder how well EA would be doing if they hadn't spent so much time spending hundreds of millions acquiring all the studios they could swallow and more time maximizing their business strategies with the strong amount of studios they already had.
Mirrors edge was very innovative and different, but i don't think it fared that well profit wise?
Bioware's acquisition was a great move by EA, they'll be printing gold rpg's till the end of time.
As far as madden goes, i don't think they spend that much money on it, and if they were smart, they would just switch madden to the MMORPG sales model.
I buy madden for 10 dollars. I pay 10 dollars a month to play it online on fast ea servers, get updated roster info the week it happens, graphical and game updates, and the new version when it comes out is 10 dollars again.
A team of 10 people or so can update roster information, periodically add graphical enhancements, update/tweak gameplay etc.
I'm not sure how large the player base is that plays madden against each other on the same screen is, but that might be the only concern.