EA coming clean?

Kiith

Taking the stage at the 2008 DICE Summit, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello presented a dark vision of gaming's future, one in which ever-rising development costs will push even more industry consolidation and eventually lead to overall creative failure.

The days of small developers creating blockbuster games are largely at an end, Riccitiello said. Games that once took 25-person teams to develop now need 200 to come to fruition, and 700 MB disks have given way to 25 GB Blu-Ray disks.

"I think we all love to think about two guys in a garage creating a bust-out game. But I don't think that broadly today is a reality or even a possibility," said Riccitiello, who recently re-joined EA after a stint as head of BioWare and Pandemic owner Elevation Partners.

As game budgets balloon and platforms proliferate (EA currently develops for 12, including mobile phones, handhelds and legacy hardware), studios need more and more money to meet gamers' ever-rising expectations. Because of the trend, Riccitiello projects that, by 2010, there will be even fewer major publishers than there are today and that second-tier publishers will dramatically thin out.

The danger in the inevitable consolidation lies in the dulling of creative voice, a problem, Riccitiello offered, that can be solved by adopting a quasi-autonomous label model similar to the one recently adopted by EA and pioneered by publishers by Take-Two and Rockstar.

In promoting the new model, Riccitiello admitted the company had failed in some of its past attempts to absorb companies into the EA fold.

"At EA we've had our share of failures with the acquisitions of developers. Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin Systems -- these places no longer exist today and are no longer creative forces in the industry," he said. "There was a fundamental belief that we could be one happy family. We had a top-down approach to development. We at EA blew it. I would say I blew it."

During his speech, Riccitiello frequently invoked upcoming EA titles coming from the various studios that make up EA's current in-house development lineup: Spore (Maxis), Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores), Warhammer (Mythic), Mirror's Edge (DICE Stockholm) and others.

He also threw out some games he's recently enjoyed, specifically mentioning BioShock, skate, Burnout Paradise, and Portal (he got stuck on level 19 and used a YouTube video to make it through).

A gamer and self-described "biz guy," Riccitiello studied business and econometrics at Cal and said he sees the current economic state of the industry -- despite its rapid growth and success -- as "disturbing."

EA's answer has become a "city-state" approach to managing its disparate development houses in which each studio retains creative control and responsibility for its own financial success but reports to and taps into the resources of its parent company. Riccitiello cited Maxis as a successful example from EA's past, before it adopted its current model.

"In many ways these companies took over electronic arts and used EA as a platform for their success. Instead of enslaving them we empowered them," he said.

With EA's recent acquisition of fan-favorite independent developers BioWare and Pandemic, the company is in a perfect position to deliver on Riccitiello's new promise. Will they follow the Maxis model or become the next Westwood and Bullfrog?

"I can't guarantee that this is going to be the perfect example," Riccitiello said. "But I think you'll find they buy into this idea as much as I do."

http://pc.ign.com/articles/850/850837p1.html

So, EA finally admit killing Westwood and Bullfrog. Lets hope they learn from their mistakes, and dont kill off Bioware and Pandemic. Its an improvement in their past attitude though, which is nice.

super_furry

EA's output has improved dramatically in the last year or so. Even FIFA is great now.

Krieg

We at EA blew it

I thought Id never hear those words.

I hate EA despite buying games they publish, I really do hope they shape up. Im sure everyone is aware of the trend in the gaming industry, reducing number of independent developers and growing publishers. We can only hope that the companies such as EA at the top tier will deliver what fans want and not just $$$ for themselves.

Who is top tier at the moment?
EA, Blizzard, Rockstar? Game companies get bought out / liquidated so quickly its hard to keep up

Pugsley

Who is top tier at the moment?

EA is by far the biggest, followed by Activision Blizzard I think.

Retr0gamer

Someones forgetting nintendo, think they could be second after EA.

steviec

Activision have made more profits than EA for the last two years, thanks to Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Whether that makes them 'bigger' or not I don't know.

Stephen

I tire of their constant sequelitis, but I can forgive them for Burnout Paradise

Fnz

Stephen wrote: »

I can forgive them for Burnout Paradise

All EA brought to the the table was an Americanized soundtrack and DJ Dudeface Super G Fly.

... still, Riccitiello's outlook is somewhat encouraging.

Stephen

This is true. Fortunately I can replace the soundtrack with my own stuff, at least on the 360 There's actually a couple of decent tracks in the game's soundtrack but it is indeed mostly ****.
Still, its nice that EA don't seem to have raped Criterion out of existence.

Krieg

steviec wrote: »

Activision have made more profits than EA for the last two years, thanks to Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Whether that makes them 'bigger' or not I don't know.

Well they were bought out by blizzard a couple months back and are now called "Activision blizzard" (Very creative :rolleyes:).
So I guess they are second tier company

Branoic

When he says he was stuck on Lvl 19 of Portal, I wonder does he mean the 19th test chamber, or some part after the test chamber during the "behind the scenes escape"? If he got stuck in the test chamber he's a f*cking pansy, that was one of the easiest chambers in the game!! Much easier than 17 or 18. Pff :rolleyes:

Kiith

Branoic wrote: »

When he says he was stuck on Lvl 19 of Portal, I wonder does he mean the 19th test chamber, or some part after the test chamber during the "behind the scenes escape"? If he got stuck in the test chamber he's a f*cking pansy, that was one of the easiest chambers in the game!! Much easier than 17 or 18. Pff :rolleyes:

Way to focus

Matt Simis

Asbad wrote: »

Well they were bought out by blizzard a couple months back and are now called "Activision blizzard" (Very creative :rolleyes:).
So I guess they are second tier company

Bought out by Vivendi, not Blizzard.

Activision-Blizzard Revenue 2007 $3.6b
EA Revenue 2007 $3.2b

Nindendo? While not a (only a) publisher, posted something like $4.5b in 2007 in revenue. One thing thats not clear is that Activision-Blizzards margin (ie profit) is much better than any normal publisher, thanks to the money vending machine that is WoW.

Zillah

Oh Westwood. They made Red Alert didn't they? First PC game I played a huge amount of.

Sarky

Wow. That's quite the statement EA made. I never thought I'd hear them say sorry for anything.

koneko

Bye bye John Riccitiello

BLITZ_Molloy

As he says there, the companies that got acquired by EA and had very strong management already in place prospered pretty well. It's just the less bullish ones that got stomped out. I don't know that the likes of Bullfrog (without the key people who created it) or Westwood would have survived long whatever the situation.

I don't think things are as grim as he's making them out to be though. One of the most successful games of last year (although you don't hear much talk about it in the dedicated games media) was Peggle. And that hardly took 200 people to develop. Once things go to full digital distribution more independent developers will have opportunities to shine. Much like the music industry.