Do you have any possible explanations for why a large chunk of the gaming community wanted to go into a frenzy over EA? Did they collectively decide to randomly target a big company, and that company just happened to be EA?
Entitlement.
Do you have any possible explanations for why a large chunk of the gaming community wanted to go into a frenzy over EA? Did they collectively decide to randomly target a big company, and that company just happened to be EA?
Just so people understand what happened:
Riccitiello was COO at EA from 1997 to 2004.
He left EA and founded the private equity firm Elevation Partners.
Elevation Partners bought Bioware and Pandemic.
Riccitiello becomes EA CEO.
EA buys Bioware and Pandemic from Elevation Partners for the hilariously bloated price of $800 million.
I suppose it's ironic that in the end, it was the purchase of Bioware that eventually doomed him with TOR.
he can be credited for greenlighting these gamesCan he really be credited for the creation of these games? I mean sure, they needed to make games, they are a games publisher.
Is this good for gamers or bad ?
Well there are only two options:
- they remain as shitty as they are now since it's impossible to have it worse
Just so people understand what happened:
Riccitiello was COO at EA from 1997 to 2004.
He left EA and founded the private equity firm Elevation Partners.
Elevation Partners bought Bioware and Pandemic.
Riccitiello becomes EA CEO.
EA buys Bioware and Pandemic from Elevation Partners for the hilariously bloated price of $800 million.
I suppose it's ironic that in the end, it was the purchase of Bioware that eventually doomed him with TOR.
Wait, so we are back to Larry Probst? Wow, turns out you can't cut the head of this snake, cause the snake is actually a goddamn hydra.
Honestly it seemed to be that a large chunk of the gaming community was just itching to go into a frenzy and bring EA to its knees and they finally got the opprotunity when EA bumbled Sim City. I think the problem was minor and blown totally out of proportion with people making an endless amount of threads, exagerating, and game journalists pouring fuel on the fire.
They had server problems for two weeks, they fixed it and gave everyone affected a free game and apologized. That should be the end of the story.
Ignoring your very favourable summation of the SC debacle, EA has been disliked for years by many poeple for its practises.
Ignoring your very favourable summation of the SC debacle, EA has been disliked for years by many poeple for its practises.
I know that Ea was hated in the early 00s for their horrible licensed games and regurgitating sports games every year but I felt they really improved under richotello and tried to innovated with new IPs and games fans actually wanted. Honestly activision is just as bad if not WORSE than EA
I honestly don't seem him stepping down as a "victory" for gamers.
I know that Ea was hated in the early 00s for their horrible licensed games and regurgitating sports games every year but I felt they really improved under richotello and tried to innovated with new IPs and games fans actually wanted. Honestly activision is just as bad if not WORSE than EA
It's not.
This is just more of the old boys' club of CEOs patting each other on the back.
"In 1984 he joined EA as Vice President for Sales. He is the current Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer of the company. When President and Chief Operating Officer John Riccitiello resigned in April 2004, Probst assumed his duties. After Riccitiello was re-hired as CEO in 2007, Probst retained his non-operational duties as Chairman."
They keep going back and forth, no responsibility is taken.
Besides, SimCity did just fine despite being a "PR nightmare" that some people think it was...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/03/18/simcity-ea-sales/1997051/
Guitar Hero is apparently on Hiatus -- I suspect it will be a once-a-generation game now, a la Mario Kart, rather than an annual franchise. I have no evidence to support that claim other than it makes sense and that Activision was explicitly clear that they would, eventually, bring the franchise back.
Regardless, if you're picking on Activision for pruning their lineup, surely you would need to do the same for EA. Just 5 years ago they were releasing 70+ retail games a year; this year they plan to release 17. Activision has been hiring in aggregate, while EA has fired tens of thousands of programmers and employees this generation.
Yes activision are, and you would see just as much baying for blood if they were to stumble. EA released two new ip's and a lot of people thought they had changed, but they have not. They have been anti consumer and anti competition for decades now, coasting on sequels and milking a small subset of consumers.
He's the interim CEO until they choose a successor. Norma business practice.
current outlook: makes no difference
Sure, I don't mean to imply that he was St John of Videogames. But he's a guy whose stated business plan was to make better games. He thought that improving the quality of the product would lead better sales, and he approved and funded a bunch of new IP to do it. Meanwhile, Activision's plan revolves around exploiting COD, WOW, and Skylanders toys.
There's an actual difference between the two, and it's not just whether you like multiplayer or single player games.
Three new IPs! Dantes Inferno, anybody?
He wasn't. It was already in production when he became CEO. His legacy of CEO is basically he didn't cancel promising games that were almost finished.Do we know Riccitiello had any input into greenlighting Mirror's Edge or is that just an assumption because he was CEO at the time?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-19-riccitiello-underestimated-the-rot-at-eaIn a note to investors following the announcement that Riccitiello is stepping down from the beleaguered company, Creutz noted that although the CEO's term was marred by a flawed strategy to turn the business around, he leaves the company in a much better state than when he re-joined the business in 2007.
"Riccitiello's reign has often been a difficult one for the company; shareholders have seen EA's stock lose more than half its value since he became CEO in 2007. The company has missed earnings guidance on a semi-regular basis and ceded market leadership to Activision Blizzard. We think the first half of Riccitiello's term was marked by flawed strategy while the latter half was impacted by spotty execution.
That first years of Riccitiello's years at EA included expensive acquisitions, too many games in production and time wasted chasing the Nintendo Wii, followed by a failed reboot of the Medal of Honor franchise and most recently a shambolic launch of SimCity.
But there are highlights to Riccitiello's reign that leave the company in a strong position compared to other big box publishers - the growth of digital retailer Origin, solid franchises like Battlefield and mobile success with titles such as The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing.
"We do think Riccitiello is leaving the company better positioned than it was when he became CEO (and certainly in much better shape than it was 4-5 years ago)," wrote Creutz.
"The company's core line-up is now focused down to a manageable amount of solid franchises, buttressed by increasingly successful downloadable content offerings, while the company's mobile business is number one in the US and appears to be gaining meaningful momentum."
time wasted chasing the Nintendo Wii
That happened?
Riccitiello resigned last night saying he was accountable for lower than expected revenue for the financial year ending 30th March 2013.
Pachter said this was a "pretty weak excuse".
"If you read his resignation letter, it was clearly prompted by the board," he said. "I think that missing guidance is a pretty weak excuse to fire him, particularly since the industry was down 24 per cent last year, and EA managed to gain share and grow its digital business.
"My guess is that the board couldn't get over the Star Wars disaster (one of the reasons for buying Pandemic/BioWare), and the departures of the doctors, the departures of all of the PlayFish guys, and lackluster social and PopCap results just tipped them against him.
"The missed guidance was the straw that broke the camel's back."
I guess they didn't catch up in the end.
Nothing is going to change. One CEO doesn't make a huge difference does it?
That's actually what I meant by that.No, I meant they released anything on Wii?
I mean aside from Boom Blox and shitty sports games.
This will be the only time I ever post this jackass's face:
I honestly don't seem him stepping down as a "victory" for gamers. From the buisness perspective EA's problem of seemingly becoming insolvent stems from their desire to occupy space in every single avenue of gaming. This can be seen from their overly ambitious if not risky attempt to penetrate the MMO market with SWTOR. Despite the game turning a profit, it did so at the immense opportunity cost $300 million (rumored) and its 5 year or so development cycle; at the end of the day, it turned out to be a short term project, similar to a console release, except with the potential risk the sink the company due to the immense cost.
This issue plagued them in other areas too, look at the MoH reboot. They weren't satisfied with their place in the shooter arena w/Battlefield and to a much smaller extent Crysis. EA put an extraordinary amount of effort into MoH with once again, very little to show for it. Sure the game didn't provide a net loss, but it performed on par with a non AAA release, which is considered a failure on the internal side.
To sum it up, chances are his successor will choose to consolidate instead of expand, with the future of the home game console business being a big question mark, I'd be willing to bet the company shifts more away from a diverse catalog of AAA games toward a smaller one + mobile games. If they were to go this route, I wouldn't hold my breath for a higher level of quality in their games. To be frank, I'd say they are a more gamer friendly publisher than Activision, but they have zero professionalism when it comes to building their relationship with their customer base.
This is a good post... In this industry that is continuously consolidating around only a few big games, EA is at risk at becoming just the Sports game company, like how Sega has become the Sonic, Total War, and Football Manager company.
No, Activision is really bad but EA is terrible.I know that Ea was hated in the early 00s for their horrible licensed games and regurgitating sports games every year but I felt they really improved under richotello and tried to innovated with new IPs and games fans actually wanted. Honestly activision is just as bad if not WORSE than EA
Have you seen what they paid for;
Popcap- $7500000000
JAMDAT - $6800000000
How did that get past the board?