He needs to try and cut a deal with M$ for Bioware and a few others...EA needs to focus on its core, like Sports titles and rebuild its shooter repertoire

Yeah, but M$ return the rights to publish to EA...so you think M$ just basically GIVE EA $30-40 million out of the goodness of hteir heart...lol...I highly doubt it. 

of course there is a deal, but they are hole in the contract, like SIGMA version, there is a different being the publisher and owning the IP.

sony owns resistance, ratchet.

Remember the rumor that Microsoft would buy out EA?

Do you guys think that maybe that started out as a threat from Microsoft to prevent Mass Effect from coming onto the PS3.

Just merely speculating.

And do you think M$ didn't learn from that little trick...I highly doubt it.  M$ owns alot of IP as well, and while MAss Effect is a nice IP, it's not like it is a Killer App one.  In movies for example, PAramount is distributing Iron Man 2, even thought Marvel produced the Film, and Disney owns Marvel.  Sony is producing and distributing Spider-Man films, and Fox is doing their thing with FF and Xmen IP.  People go around like EA now owns the Mass Effect IP, and they can just launch the game as they see fit...not quite.  M$ made some concessions to allow the game to be launch on the PC at the same time, and for EA to publish the game...I highly doubt that they also said, hey, you can go ahead and launch a PS3 version as well...does that make any sense?  Really...

They might just fart out a mountain of shovelware to put on the new HD motion control devices.

We'll see though, who knows, they're an insanely big company, and have been around for a while, maybe they'll have a few tricks up their sleeves...

If business as usual means more layoffs, continuing financial losses, then yes, business as usual.

One advantage EA has is that they're debt free, that should give them some opportunity to continue posting losses while not having to declare bankruptcy.

I'm hoping things will start to look up. With many of their major franchises, they have had to invest heavily, and they are going to start paying back. Look at FIFA 10, they have invested hugely in that series to get it to being the best footballing series, and now look at the results, on metacritic and in terms of sales, and without revolutionary changes needed for 11 (just fix the choice of player, and the momentum system!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) that should be more profitable

I suppose the big games of this year from them are:

FIFA 11
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Dead Space 2
Madden 11
Medal of Honour
Dante's Inferno
Need for Speed
Mass Effect 2

So, FIFA and Madden are just money makers, and should subside potentially low sales from Dante. Battlefield BC 2 should sell great, at least 6m across all platforms. Medal of Honour will do well, the name has been tarnished, but they will back it up with a huge marketing campaign, and with no IW game, I think they will do fine, though they will hope no GeoW 3 pops up. Dead Space 2 will do better, especially with MP. Need for Speed will also do well, as this year the game will actually be good, with Criterion, who will hopefully take it back to its roots (Underground, Hot Pursuit etc) with extra crashes! So that will certainly sell well

I think it is going to be a better year from EA, they have many many AAA games, and by getting rid of Pandemic, they are just decreasing the average games that they were spewing out. EA have changed, and now they do deliver quality. My only concern, in terms of sales, will be Dante's Inferno, especially with GoW III round the corner from it, and questionable originality to say the least

EA would be a fool to get rid of Bioware.  One of their few properties which is actually making solid games that are making money for them.  What they NEED to do is either let go of a number of their properties they bought out durring their huge spending spree of buying companies or conglomerate the majority of them into smaller groups to focus on bigger, more cost effective games.  There's been internal studies at EA where they found the majority of their teams are made up of less than 100 people and producing 1 game every 2 years.  This is a HORRIBLE structure for a company.

Especially under EA, when most of those secondary groups will then have their game rushed halfway through their game development and it'll be released unfinished.  All the more reason the various groups should be combined and focus on a smaller number of bigger budget games.

Yeah, but they would fetch a very nice price...