EA Posts Fiscal Q3 Net Loss of $641 million

[Aiemond]

HappySqurriel said:

Groucho said:
Despite the consoles having approximately equal marketshare, EA got 29% of its revenue from HD titles, and 11% from Wii titles.

Did EA have a 29:11 HD to Wii game ratio (or more like 29:14, thanks to individual unit costs)? Were the profit margins on Wii games so much higher than the HD games, that EA should just drop HD development altogether? Was it even higher at all? Does anyone have any real numbers to support these assumptions?

The Wii doesn't make EA as much revenue OR profit as the HDs -- if it did, EA would make a lot more Wii games, plain and simple. The "3rd parties make crap for the Wii" excuse is getting old. All of EA's AllPlay titles this past year were decent, yet their revenue stunk. Should EA just abandon their sports franchise staples altogether, and start making pool, pinball, etc. for the Wii masses, or do you think that's already covered a bit?

The attach rate is for 3rd party Wii titles is abysmal. Its *not* because they all "stink", either. The Wii sucks for 3rd party development, in all but a select few genres (i.e. casual), until proven otherwise, or until it outnumbers the HDs by a colossal margin.

 

How many Wii games had the development budget or marketing budget of Army of Two, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Burnout Paradise, Mercenaries 2 or Battlefield Bad Company?

Realistically, those games probably have 2 to 4 times the combined development and marketing budget of all Wii games released by EA to date ...

 

The wii games don't need the same budget as HD, what they need though, is the good teams working hard to make the best game possible. The nature of the wii makes it so that dev costs will be inherently lower. Now, for marketing, if they got even half that budget, DONE CORRECTLY, we would see a marked difference.