EGM Rumour: EA launches own console in 2010

[Fastrabbit09]

they can release crappier versions of madden, fifa on the other consoles...MANY MANY more features and MUCH better play on their console with gimped features on the other consoles...make their console's version the definitive one


in determining whether to do this, they have to look at how much they pay to nintendo+sony+ms for licensing fees vs how much it would cost them to r&d and then market/sell a console + how much they'd lose in sales from other consoles if they make the games exclusive to their console....

they will also get some licensing fees from other studios that make games and put them on the ea console, but most of the advantage of this would come from saving the money on licensing fees

if they buy up take2 and ubisoft and some others, then they could be looking at owning the rights to games that sell some 100mil copies a year combined...100mil * licensing fees (anybody have a good idea of how much the big 3 charge?) is a lot of money each year...1 billion/year if it's 10/game for licensing fees

they would likely make their console pretty similiar to ps360 or the wii/ps2 so that easy porting could be done, leading to more 3rd parties on their system paying them licensing fees

the big question for them would be if they should go exclusive or not with most of their games...predicting how many they would sell would be big here...if they did gta exclusive to their console, would it drop from selling 10mil to only 5mil? if so, that's 5mil*their cut of the game lost...and the 5mil * licensing fees doesn't make up for that unless the amount they make is equal to the amount of licensing fees paid

the best strategy would likely be to wait for tech to come down in price and then release a cheap console that is close enough to the others to have ported games and then release their major games on all the consoles, but have the by-far-definitive version be on their console...so gta goes to the others but has more missions, a larger city, more dlc, etc on their console...do that with all their big IPs and it'd be enough to sway a lot of people towards their console, especially if they also own take2 and ubisoft and a few other strategic partners

they'd also be best served to launch it with the definitive version of at least 20+ of their big selling ips (obv all the sports games, but also some of ubi's top games and gta5 and others)....wouldn't be tough since they release a ton of games each year to also port them to their console and add more content