Neither game sold near what EA expected, even though they reviewed amazingly well and had fast/steep price cuts.  They wanted 3 million alone for Mirror's Edge, it sold about a third that.

EA's Wii comments are just odd really given they had no significant Wii releases this quarter, bar multiplatform fare like Madden or FIFA (both of which they've clearly mismanaged), and revenues nearly doubled from the platform year on year, pushing it to 2nd place ahead of PS3.  When put in context, it really does ring like scapegoating.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a problem with EA when it's the gamers that aren't buying new IP's in favor of sequels and spinoffs...

It's true that Army of Two and Mirror's Edge only did well once the prices dropped (which was fast). Mirror's Edge had a terrible launch.

Army of Two also had free DLC, another two missions which were about 40 minutes each added on a few months after release...now, they're making an exclusive pre-order MP mode (for the first month) for the sequel to try to get more people to buy it at full price (as they should). Yet for some reason, people put the blame on EA despite it being the gamers themselves who are either pirating (even with bans those 360's can still be played offline) or buying cheaper used while game development costs continue to rise.

The development costs of their games is entirely within EA;s control, and claiming that piracy and used game sales are hurting their bottom line is silly when EA posts record revenues; and have survived decades when rentals, used game sales, piracy, and game trading were rampant.

Part of the reason game development costs continue to rise is because of developers like EA, who buy up tons of smaller studios and make bigger and bigger games each year.  Consumers respond by buying the bigger, flashier games and then demanding bigger and flashier games, which cost more money.  EA can't then turn around and blame rising costs that they helped contribute to.

And as for rentals, game renting has actually gone down over the years.  Piracy is at an all time high, but game rentals are very low compared to the days of the NES/SNES.

As for people not buying new IPs, that's always been around.  True, there were more new IPs on the older systems, but that's because they were truly new back then.  Stuff like Metal Gear or Ninja Gaiden or even Mario first started back then...so now people are buying their sequels.  It gets harder and harder each gen to develop new IPs simply because the gaming market is already so huge and you will need a huge media budget just to get noticed.  Once again, going back to those huge production costs tied to companies like EA who can shell out 50 million dollars for their commercials of the next Madden title.

See, this isn't the days of the SNES when someone could just come out with a new IP like 'Pocky & Rocky' or 'Worms' and sell around 500,000 copies and that was deemed a 'hit'.  Now adays, a 'hit' is when your game sells well over a million, because of the increased production costs and MUCH larger market.

Eh, just because there are more gamers now than ever doesn't mean piracy and used games aren't an increasing problem. There's a reason 600k pirates were just banned on 360. Microsoft wants them to buy new consoles for the holidays, as well as driving home the idea that if they want to play Modern Warfare 2 online, they need to buy a copy in a store.

It also does show when the resources aren't there, but I guess you haven't played some of the garbage the underfunded devs for smaller companies have churned out like I have.