EA is the quintessential multiplatform company so they are getting hit hardest at the moment. 3 years ago things were so easy, make a game on the PS2, port to Xbox and GCN, maybe spend half a mil on a GBA version. Now they have to do an expensive PS3/360 version (I wonder how much of their profit troubles are from high cost of game development on those systems), a PSP/PS2 version with a similar Wii version that is usually done seperately due to the motion controls, and last but not least a DS version. Or they can stick to only the high cost HD systems but that reduces their expenses the least while reducing their sales the most (even if they do 360 alone).

 EA and a lot of the 3rd parties are going to have to make a lot of tough decisions because the PS3/360 have a way to go before they can reliably return a profit for games (though they'll never return the kind of profits the PS2 did), the PS2 gravy train has got to end at some point, Wii owners are not buying the PSP/PS2 remake trash devs were trying to score a quick buck on, and the growing share of the Wii/DS requires them to compete directly with the best software company in the world for the first time in over 10 years. Someone on these forums said EA doesn't come in second, this shows they're going to have to learn how.

It's kinda obvious EA WILL make profit in the fiscal year of 2008. With massive Wii support in the form of exclusive titles like EA playgroun and Boogie they will appeal to the mass casual market. They also own entries like Madden or Fifa which always end up on top of the charts for all platforms... As such, they should make enough revenue to ensure profit above dev costs and advertising.

 I hope you aren't refering to userbase. the PSP has never been ahead of the DS in any region when it comes to userbase. The PSP has the monthly sales edge on the DS in the U.S. for a while but it never suprassed the DS in total userbase. So I don't know how you can make that statement.

 As for your asserations about the Wii and PS3, you are just flat out mistaken. The Wii has lower development cost and higher potential sales. The PS3 version of an EA title has to sell more copies than the Wii version to net EA the same amount of profit. 

So far the only software publisher harvesting outstanding profits from Wii game sales is Nintendo. For example according to this week's US sales figures sales of Spiderman 3 for the Nintendo lags significantly behind XBox 360, PS2 and PS3 sales of the game. I think one problem with most multi-platform games is that the Nintendo Wii version will look much weaker compared to the other versions, if done well on those higher specced platforms. Nintendo fans mostly seem to buy Nintendo's great games, of which there is no comparison version available for other platforms.

It looks like EA:s sport licenses are ending and they have to buy new ones. At least if we look at how big the one-time expenses are. And EA didn't make mistake by supporting PSP, its mistake was bad support for the DS. EA also did a mistake with bad support for Wii and unlike Shane said, EA didn't have its sports releases on all platforms, Wii didn't get NHL. And NHL is pretty big franchise. Let's see how it happens with FIFA. If EA would have released more games for Wii or PS3, it wouldn't have changed the situation, at least not much, but if they would have put some effort to titles released, that may have helped EA. PS3 at least got some 360 ports, in which had put some effort, but Wii got quick PS2 ports, which quality was extremely low. Generation changes are always expensive to developers, but fiscal 2009 EA makes pretty good profit again.

I'm not too sure it has nearly as much to do with graphics as you would assume ...

One of the reasons Nintendo always dominates (in terms of sales) on their own platform is that Nintendo fans seem unwilling to support shitty games; games like The Legend of Zelda, Super Paper Mario, and Wario Ware will have (very) long shelf lives because in a slow month when your options are to buy Spiderman 3 (a very poor game) or something you haven't played yet gamers will pick up an "old" high quality Nintendo game rather than Spiderman 3.

I know what you're saying "Not ever Nintendo game is high quality" but if you really look into it Nintendo's poor games usually are pretty well executed. Consider that Excite Truck only had an average of 75% on Gamerankings.com (the lowest Nintendo made Wii game except for Wiiplay), the breakdown of scores looks like:

And the average User Rating on Gamerankings in 8.5

@ HappySqurriel I was rather thinking about game complexity in general, graphics is an important aspect of this. I think the Wii ports will have more in common with the PS2 version than with the XBox 360 and PS3 versions. Nintendo makes outstandingly cute games within which actual realism and complexity is of less importance, if you produce games which are meant to impress in the realism department the hardware is pretty limited compared to the competition.

I myself and my girlfriend both own Nintendo DSes, we prefer light-hearted games when travelling. But for my home system for many types of games I prefer to see more realism and game complexity, like for instance Oblivion, First Person shooters, Racing games like Motorstorm, etc. IMO games like Rachet and Clank, Ape Escape or Kameo are examples of games gernes for which lesser graphics and game complexity is of less importance, but that doesn't mean improved game complexity would be completely worthless neither. Mario64 is still one of the best games I've ever played though, overall maybe better than any 3D game we have seen so far this generation, but technically the game could even run emulated with some improvements on a PS3.

 F*K. Spring 2008?!?

Oh well, the fact EA is letting them have delays, and obviously giving them the budget that makes me happy, and now I expect more from that game. So it's good... just kinda dissapointed. I wanted to see it this year. 

The problem with EA (and perhaps it's not so much a problem with them as with Wii) is that they love a quick port. Wii doesn't offer that, so Wii owners should be happy they're getting anything. The exclusive titles is probably about as much actual effort as we'll see from EA. Figured out was wrong, so I will revise that to DS having a 100k unit advantage through mid-last year. Considering that Nintendo dominates the charts on all their systems and both systems were at 4.5 million units, I stand by the PSP being the system of choice. Let's assume that Wii costs half as much to develop for, and let's say that the cost of a game on Wii is $5 million. So EA gets one game for $5 million. They then develop a game for PS3 for a cost of $10 million. They follow that up with a port to 360 for 10% of the original cost. That makes the cost of development for each game $5.5 million. They then port it to the PC for a similar percentage. That drops the cost of development for each game to $4 million. Aside from the fact that the Wii version is likely to have worse sales, which is cheaper again?