After 6 straight quarters of lowered or missed earnings estimates, EA has come realize that they must change their direction if they want to change the slip in their fortunes. To do this they are refocussing themselves to rely on more creative internal game development projects, such as Will Wright's upcoming "Spore", while moving away from their "dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises". Paul Lee, president of EA's Worldwide Studios, intends to increase EA's portfolio of original, internally designed and developed games from 30% to 50% over the next 12 to 18 months.
[color=#999999]Source: Business Week Online more info ][/color]

It's good to see EA's desire to change directions. I just wish it was motivated by some need to produce creative games rather than concern over sliding revenues. And, old habits die hard; so, I wouldn't exactly be surprised if in 12 to 18 months, they're still happily eating the hearts of kittens and churning out the same tired, old, rehashed titles.

if they actuly manage to change then it will be good by as you said it is very unlikely that that will happen

Would be nice to see them bring back Earth and beyond. But figure the chances on that.

If they actually succeed in that they might gain a little bit of my respect back

Imagine that
Apart from Spore and a couple of other tried & true high profile games there is nothing interesting in the EA lineup .

I find the idea of the "gaming" industry on the whole to be a conundrum. The most profitable games often are those that aren't looking to make a huge market killing but rather developed for the sake of developing.

The largest productions are generally over seen by bottom line, demographic spewing corporate occilates who know next to nothing about good gaming.

I like EA's move but I sincerely doubt they would fork over their kind of production values to the people who would truly make inventive games.

My boyfriend loves the Madden NFL series, but even he is getting tired of EA's linear thinking. Given they aren't a creative company and are only changing direction because of poor profits (geez, you'd think all the protests against horrible games would have an effect given we're the ones who buy their products), I don't forsee anything good coming from them any time soon. From what I read, Spore sounds like a ripoff from another game. Gee, color me surprised.

Same with the movies Krunch. The most touted and "inspiring" movies tend to be the ones that focus on the screenplay as opposed to appeasing the masses. Don't get me wrong sometimes they do both, but it don't happen too often.

I believe the root problem to be that most companies can't afford to be wrong, therefore they don't take a chance with their games. I mean if a game flops and cost 50mlln to make then somebody's probably not gonna have a job next month.

Perhpas companies should move towards a licencing agreement with the big dogs like microsoft. Something along the lines of "Hey give me $xx to make this game and then you can put it on all of your Windows OS." Microsoft could come out with a "gaming" version of XP including all the major hits of '05 or some such. Just a thought, but until companies do find a security blanket, i.e. constant stable influx of cash, the games are gonna be mediocre to decent, and every now and again GREAT.

Spore is partly totally all new, and partly a ripoff of pretty much every genre of game out there. It starts out 2d ... "asteroids" kinda thing, progresses to 3d hunter typical hack and slash kinda thing, progresses to city builder sim kinda thing, then onto civilization builder "Populous" kinda thing with a hint of RTS, and concludes as a space civilization thing. The transitions between these stages and the modeling along the way is what makes it unique. So I guess one could view it as a "rip off" of other games, but I prefer to think of it as a joining of multiple games. I am looking forward to the game myself, it may just pause my non-stop eq2 addiction for a few days/hours.... :-)

Save The Kittens!

Originally Posted by Kinch:

Same with the movies Krunch. The most touted and "inspiring" movies tend to be the ones that focus on the screenplay as opposed to appeasing the masses. Don't get me wrong sometimes they do both, but it don't happen too often.

I believe the root problem to be that most companies can't afford to be wrong, therefore they don't take a chance with their games. I mean if a game flops and cost 50mlln to make then somebody's probably not gonna have a job next month.

Perhpas companies should move towards a licencing agreement with the big dogs like microsoft. Something along the lines of "Hey give me $xx to make this game and then you can put it on all of your Windows OS." Microsoft could come out with a "gaming" version of XP including all the major hits of '05 or some such. Just a thought, but until companies do find a security blanket, i.e. constant stable influx of cash, the games are gonna be mediocre to decent, and every now and again GREAT.

Yep ... although with movies they tend to go in trends. When one first-time/little known director makes a break out movie, all of a sudden you see a bunch of no-name/little known directors making their debuts with a-list movies.

In gaming, it seems that you get the no-name developer that makes a splash and then 50 billion corporate copy cats that try to ride that gravy train (and subsequently end up squashing the other no-name developers in that time span).

Even more so, with movies if a no-name director makes a flop, it doesn't make as big a depression in the industry as a no-name developer does to a gaming medium (Horizons to MMOGs for example). Probably due to the Movie industry being much more established but it still seems to be the trend.