EA Unhappy With Holiday Sales, Plans to Axe Games
Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Electronic, Arts, EA, Economy, Holiday
EA certainly isn’t enjoying its holiday season. Due to slumping holiday sales, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello said that more layoffs may be coming and additional 2009 titles and products may be canceled.
During an investor conference call today, EA CEO John Riccitiello confirmed what many were expecting. Over the next several months, EA will have at least one additional round of layoffs in an effort to cut costs. The layoffs are due to EA lowering its expectations on net revenue and earnings per share for the 2009 fiscal year.
So what is causing the lowered expectations? Lackluster holiday sales. Riccitiello is blaming retailers above all else for the slump. Due to retailers carrying larger-than-normal stock of the top five selling games of the year, many were forced to scale down their stock of other titles, leaving developers and publishers with more stock than they wanted. However, the CEO was also quick to point out that 17 EA’s 2008 titles have a Metacritic score of 80 or higher, a significant jump over 2007s total of seven titles.
"While we saw significant improvement in the overall quality of our key products this year, we are disappointed that our holiday slate is not meeting our sales expectations," said Riccitiello. "Given this performance and the uncertain economic environment, we are taking steps to reduce our cost structure and improve the profitability of our business."
The CEO added, "While we are cutting costs, we remain committed to investing in great game quality, in new properties and in our direct-to-consumer initiatives. We will be launching several new titles and online games in fiscal 2010."
While the number of layoffs and where they will come from are yet to be determined, EA will also be consolidating studios during the process. Two studios that will combined are EA Sims (The Sims, Sim City) and EA Casual, which already oversees pogo.com, EA Mobile and EA Hasbro. This impending round of layoffs follows a first swipe back in late October, which saw six percent of the company get pink slips.
EA is also expected to cut several titles slated for 2009 altogether. While EA Sports will remain untouched, the bulk of the cuts will "be divided evenly between core and casual" software, according to Kotaku. Riccitiello also commented on how EA need to ramp up its efforts concerning software for the Wii. With two-thirds of Wii software sales coming from Nintendo, the CEO said that "For those of us making console games, that’s a challenge that we certainly have to contend with." He also said that some of the few titles EA has for the Wii, like The Sims and Boom Blox, are performing well. Boom Blox currently has a Metacritic score of 85.
-
Previous News Article
Sony Talks XMB, Netflix, PS2... -
Next News Article
Yahoo! Considering Former...
Granted, the economy is bad...but this couldn't have anything to do with the following could it?
1. SecuRom
2. John Madden VIIXXXIIVVIX (People already have cool sports games, why buy new ones?)
3. XBox and PS3 have been out awhile. The early adopters/hardcore console gamers already own many games for their consoles, and the ones they don't own they'll rent to try or borrow from their friend's collection.
4. EA turns original ideas into "tried and true" ones. A person can only play so many Sims games until they realize they just wasted years of their life improving a character and not themselves.
Easy fix,
Get rid of SecuRom and people will start buying the games again.
JonnyDough, you hit the point right on the head with #3. People are refusing to buy these games, and it is drastically hurting EA's sales. Rentals and second-hand games are destroying our economy, our country, and our way of life. Well, at least thats what whiney little game producers would want us to believe.
Personally I think it's just crappy games and poor management decisions. Why are there 50 different EA brands? I mean, jesus christ you don't need a different brand for every game you make, thats a crap load of overhead. Reduce overhead, and limit your game production to games people want to play. Look at Blizzard, I haven't heard any problems from them, and they make like 1 game a year, but rake in millions from WoW.
im not surprised by this. EA haven't made any high quality games in years
The problem is with how they are SLOWLY making thier games better... I mean occasionally they release a game that gets high scores and good sales. But the are always limited to new games. I played the first Tiger Woods PGA tour and that was the end of it for me. I played the hell out of it cause it had replay value and now I would never buy another one. Mostly cause I have a Wii now, but that is beside the point! If you ask me people are just finally getting wise on how EA has been milking thier titles for the past 7 years.
whatever all you bashers...I'm still looking forward to Red Alert 27. I bet the tag line will be, "The Red Alert that comes after Red Alert 26, but before Madden 2023"
in other words...ditto on what you all said...esp the securom crap
SecuRom
Easy fix,Get rid of SecuRom and people will start buying the games again.
Exactly man, right to the point. +1
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13648
LOL!
LOL ^
The most pathetic thing about this? Is they still won't learn from their dumb mistakes.
This is not surprising, this is one of the lousiest console hardware generations.
The cost of the newer consoles is still too high.
And more importantly the cost (time and money) to develop games is too high.
We are seeing less titles released, especially for the PC.
Without a significant quantity of quality games for a console, consumers will not fork over the money to buy new consoles and games.
As this guy stated before, all of you who complain about SecureROM are pirates. Nevermind that pirates don't even install that crap.
Ricci's world must be a scary place, where all customers and potential customers are thieves.
SecureRom. It's the reason I have not buyed at least 3 games so far, that where otherwise very interesting... During this year I mean.
Oh, why, oh why...
I don't mind copy protection. I do mind if some program screw my computer... Use hardware protection or something else, but when you mess with my system, that can affect my work. I am not too happy. I can not afford to have two computers. One for games and one for work, so I can be sure, that my work computer does not crash for some unsuspecting error.
As this guy stated before, all of you who complain about SecureROM are pirates. Nevermind that pirates don't even install that crap.Ricci's world must be a scary place, where all customers and potential customers are thieves.
your an idiot.
But you have a point all the people complaining about securom do become pirates. (i know he said are) no one in thier right mind would want that crap on thier comp and since they wont take it out guess what?
there is a easy word for why they arent selling anything
#1 securom
#2 securom
#3 securom
#4 securom
#5 EA sux at making games
#6 securom
im sorry you live in a bubble jalek and everything is only black and white to you. In reality land there is a grey area to.
His world btw is a scary place because he might have been the half whitted moron who thought securom was going to save him from pirates instead of ya know making stuff worth buying. Now the problem is the 1% of stuff EA makes that IS worth buying is now worthless because it has securom on it. someone get that guy a friggin medal for destroying EA (if there was anything left that is)
EA Makes me sick , they screw up by using sony's secuROM , So they start laying off their developers that actually made the games. And of coruse they keep using secuROM cos thier customers are all theives ??? I'm ready to see EA file chapter 11 then dget denied !
as for games i would have bought but didn't
1. Spore
2. Dead Space
3. Mirror's Edge
4. Need for speed Undercover
5. Crysis
6. Crysis Warhead
THAT is 6 games i didnt not buy this year after gettgin this new comp ALL because they used SecuROM
That's not even counting any future battle field games i may have gotten
now for some NON EA titles i will be avoiding over SecuROM, or other root kitish DRM
1. Far Cry 2 (ubisoft/securom)
2. GTA IV (rockstar/securom)
3. Stalker: clear skys (THQ/TAGS DRM [similar to securom])
Games I got instead
1. Tombraider Underworld (edios)
2. Left 4 Dead (valve)
3. Fallout 3 (gettign it on x-mas) (bethesda)
4. CliveBarker's Jerhico
5. Stalker shadow of chernobyl ( i got it before i relised it's sequel would use a root kitish DRM if i had known ahead of time i'd not have gotten this game either )
NOTE: most of these use either NO DRM (such as tombraider) or the least intrusive DRM's such as cd keys and or steam account(Left 4 Dead)
1. Securom
2. Most of EAs titles are sequels with minor modifications to their older games.
3. Securom
4. Idiot management
5. Securom
6. The guy at EA who wants to keep Securom
So EA, in the midst of very public criticism over the horrible copy protection schemes in their major attention-grabbing titles, AND during a severe economic downturn, EA decided it was the stores' fault for stocking so many of their best-selling titles?
Isn't EA the company that is pushing its major titles so much that retailers don't give space to the smaller publishers? Shouldn't that INCREASE EA's sales, and decrease the competition's?
Personally, I'm glad that EA is doing badly and making stupid decisions. Even before securom, they've been buying up and wrecking good game franchises for years. The faster EA dies the better. And this is coming from a software developer that works close to their head office / largest development studio. I'm not looking forward to all the local lost jobs, but I'll be happy when they stop trying to ruin the gaming industry.
They played with fire, and they lost. They thought they were so big that the small group of PC users who they've been screwing with DRM would not affect their sales. They seriously thought that because they stopped making a PC version of NBA Live or Madden, I'd go drop my quad core 4850 computer, and go out and spend $450 on a PS3 + $60 for their game. This guy lives in another world. Dude, I'd quit gaming forever before I use a console. Consoles are for babies.
If only EA Games listed to their customers and were responsive like the software game company Stardock (yeah!!), then MAYBE they wouldn't be in the hole they're in now.
EA, you deserve this.