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Xelloss on 18 January 2010
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I have to disagree with all the naysayers, EA is heading in the right direction at the right time. Activision will be in " trouble" next, and the only reason the effects on recession are milder in their case is because of Blizzard and the fact that WoW mints more money than the US Treasury dept.

In fact, EA focus on quality is arguably the reason things are not worse for them. If they were still putting out mostly garbage, they may have gone the way of Midway already. As is, witha couple small exceptions, like trying to make a mature game on Wii, even if all of their games have not been mega hits most have had sales likely to make profits, just not mega profits.

What seems to be happening to me is crap games and "me-too" games seem to be doing something of a decline, games on PS360 and PC need to reach a certain quality mark to even have a chance at being sucessful, though we all know that quality has never ensured success.

I highly question the motives and insight of the author of the article.

It takes time to create games, and it takes time to build IP. Assassins creed and MW are both cases in point, where in the former a quality but slightly lacking new IP improved itself and went on to make real bank with the second installment, and the latter - well it actually took the CoD franchise many games to find the "Sweet spot" and make the big bank, then mega bank with MW2.

Conversely, heavily marketed tie in games like Avatar are doing crap. 5 years ago, Avatar "the game" would have scored 1m plus easily due to movie-tie in, and pretty screen shots. These days, not so much... because due to the unprecedented levels of social networking, everyone knows the game is crap.

EA is also moving quickly toward the digital DL market, and making the right moves in figuring out how best to monetize all the opportunity there. They are also making plenty of headway in figuring out how to bring in the dollars from PC gamers, with high focus on DDL and their aquisition of Playfish, and upcoming integrating of existing franchises into the casual and social areas. The execution may or may not end up being flawed, but I think the principle has enormous possibility.

JR knows what he is doing, I think he has seen the trends extremely well, and as long as nothing stupid happens with an impatient board, EA will be much stronger in 2 years and beyond whereas their previous path would possibly already have them on the door of bankruptcy.