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John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Electronic Arts. [Resignation/Farewell Letters]

Rad-

Member
Mercenaries 1 was fantastic, Battlefront were both fun too.

I don't understand why people blame EA for Pandemic's downfall though. Yeah, EA shut them down, but can you blame them? Mercenaries 2 was delayed what, 4 times? And was still an unfinished broken mess. The Saboteur was also delayed, and while it was a good game it also felt unfinished.

I always felt EA didn't even want to buy Pandemic. They just came with Bioware.
 
EA is too damn big. I dont see anything changing game quality wise f/ the next guy @ the helms. These guys dont give a shit about a game being good or not, they just want $ to please shareholders which of course makes sense, but when you're ij the gaming business, things can go south quickly by bad decisions.
 

jaypah

Member
I just woke up from a nap and saw this. Kind of crazy. Not shocking, people have been calling this for a while.
 
For a publicly traded company, the board of directors. For a private firm, whoever owns it.
So what would they be looking for in a CEO? I guess I just always imagined these guys as just being rich dudes who fall into the position. They have to have run a large company previously?

Generally the board of directors interviews people internally and externally and picks the choice they like best, sometimes with input from the previous CEO depending on if they trust their judgment.

The last time this happened (with Larry Probst moving from CEO to Chairman of the Board), Larry favored EA's former COO (JR) for the job and he ended up getting selected.
Ah okay.
 

Cosmozone

Member
Can't say if anything will change after this. EA is pretty much a faceless company to me with exchangeable managers who could as well manage in the music industry or whatever and who don't have a clue about the material they're dealing with.
 

GavinGT

Banned
Peter Moore is just as bad as Riccitiello these days. I get the impression that the last few years would have gone down much the same if he had been CEO instead.

But I must say I'm glad that EA's handling of Sim City seemed to be the tipping point for Riccitiello. Hopefully the new CEO gets the message that shit like that is unacceptable and that it severely hurts a company's image.
 

Juken

Member
Hope this means we finally get Mirror's Edge 2 and more Bad Company...

We only got Mirror's Edge due to Riccitiello's original focus on creating new IP and improving game quality at EA. And that didn't work out for him in the end, so I doubt it.
 
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/18/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-has-stepped-down/#more-146304

From the RPS article, Walker thinks it sounds like he is falling on his sword, so EA can gain some ground that they have lost since hiring him.

I would be shocked if this changes how they do business though, since it is so monolithic in size, that changing course will break a few things.

I doubt it changes anything at EA. Company never really turned around, guy is the CEO of a company that continues to make stupid mistakes like with SimCity.

Ceremonial stepping down while they put another goon in front to placate stock holders with the "idea" of "fresh blood".
 

unbias

Member
Could someone kind enough list the studios that have closed during riccitello's tenure?

According to Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#Studio_acquisition_and_management_practices

EA Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, founded in 1990 as NuFX, acquired in 2004, closed November 6, 2007.
Pandemic Studios in Los Angeles, California and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, founded in 1998, acquired October 2007 from Elevation Partners, closed November 17, 2009.
Bright Light, in Guildford, Surrey, formerly EA UK, closed in 2011.
 

Animator

Member
Nothing will change other than this guy's resume.

Yea exactly. It is cute how people think EA will change overnight, announce they are bringing back Westwood studios and denounce microtransactions or something but at the end of the day it is a publicly traded company. That is where creativity goes to die. They main focus is to make the most money for their shareholders not "how can we win the hearts of gamers". I expect nothing to change.
 

sleepykyo

Member
Hope this means we finally get Mirror's Edge 2 and more Bad Company...

ringcpl.jpg

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Whoever comes in and looks over JR's history is going to note that ME, DS, Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned and Dante's Inferno bombed. So no Mirror's Edge 2 and no single player games (outside of Bioware's rpgs).
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I'm curious. Why him and not Peter Moore?

Frank Gibeau was the one who actually successfully revamped their core gaming division from gigantic licensed game trainwreck to a division focused on quality owned IP, and has worked from tester on up at the company, so he actually has experienced the perspective of working at almost every level at the company and is less likely to make decisions solely from a business point of view.

Judging by Peter Moore's comments and perspectives, picking him would pretty much be the "run the company how JR would, but with a new face" option, and continuing on under the assumption that their strategy was solid but just needed more time and tweaking. He would probably also hasten their move to being very f2p heavy in the more negative connotation, since he's rather enamored with it lately.
 

Opiate

Member
Yea exactly. It is cute how people think EA will change overnight, announce they are bringing back Westwood studios and denounce microtransactions or something but at the end of the day it is a publicly traded company. That is where creativity goes to die. They main focus is to make the most money for their shareholders not "how can we win the hearts of gamers". I expect nothing to change.

I think they would be looking to win the hearts of "gamers" if those hearts were profitable.

The problem is that they didn't turn out to be. At least, not the types of "gamers" that EA was largely after. Too small a market for too high a production cost.
 
It's no surprise that he was fired because he definitely didn't step down by his own free will.

But EA has painted itself into a corner. The board obviously had no confidence in JR being able to turn things around without huge cuts to the workforce and culling a large percentage of titles in development.

EA is too bloated, too sluggish and too fearful of making changes that are necessary for it to adapt and survive. It will flounder on for a good few years yet living off it's annual sports franchises but it will never again be the force it once was.

The gaming ecosystem has changed and the dinosaurs will slowly but surely be dying out.

The beginning of the end of an era...
 

evangd007

Member
I never thought Dead Space would be 5+M material, but would be a great 1-2M selling franchise as long as you don't fuck around too much with its formula or try to milk it to death. Now that the 5+M plan has been botched, my fear is that the franchise is too damaged to return to its previous, more modest expectations.

A big part of that would be carefully managing the budget so that it could be profitable at 1-2 million. However they ballooned the budget in pursuit of that 5 million sales.

On another note, I can't see how the next CEO will be any better. I expect much worse.
 
Good. Evil fucker.

Of course unless this resignation was forced by a ton of internal pressure building up, it probably won't change much.
 

diamount

Banned
So what would they be looking for in a CEO? I guess I just always imagined these guys as just being rich dudes who fall into the position. They have to have run a large company previously?


Ah okay.

People with a successful track record in the respective field.
 

Syraxith

Member
Yea exactly. It is cute how people think EA will change overnight, announce they are bringing back Westwood studios and denounce microtransactions or something but at the end of the day it is a publicly traded company. That is where creativity goes to die. They main focus is to make the most money for their shareholders not "how can we win the hearts of gamers". I expect nothing to change.

Remember back in 06/07 when he was heralded as EA's savior?

A couple years after that games like Deadspace 1 and Mirror's Edge were released. It seemed like EA was truly doing a 180 on their image compared to the late 90s/early 00s.

Boy how quickly some things change.

I think they would be looking to win the hearts of "gamers" if those hearts were profitable.

The problem is that they didn't turn out to be. At least, not the types of "gamers" that EA was largely after. Too small a market for too high a production cost.

Also this.
 

GavinGT

Banned
Shouldn't it be the opposite? Whoever comes in and looks over JR's is going to note that ME, DS, Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned and Dante's Inferno bombed. So no Mirror's Edge 2 and no single player games (outside of Bioware's rpgs).

Yeah, I wouldn't expect a second Renaissance of creativity within EA's dev studios. The most we can hope for is that they'll reexamine how far they can push the profit : sleaze ratio before people start getting seriously upset.
 

massoluk

Banned
It's no surprise that he was fired because he definitely didn't step down by his own free will.

But EA has painted itself into a corner. The board obviously had no confidence in JR being able to turn things around without huge cuts to the workforce and culling a large percentage of titles in development.

EA is too bloated, too sluggish and too fearful of making changes that are necessary for it to adapt and survive. It will flounder on for a good few years yet living off it's annual sports franchises but it will never again be the force it once was.

The gaming ecosystem has changed and the dinosaurs will slowly but surely be dying out.

The beginning of the end of an era...

That's not fair to dinosaurs. Dinosaurs is evolution's success story, that get wiped out only because a damn meteor hit the earth, and they still managed to live on as birds even that. :p

Riccitiello is in a weird place for me. Dude began very strong, but what we like about him then DIDN'T make money for EA. So EA went batshit insane during his later year and finally made money. Don't know exactly how I feel about this.
 

MechaX

Member
Wada killed it with Eidos. Regardless of game quality, the games themselves are doing pretty well and new IPs have an excellent chance of being franchised.

It's just all the other stuff in his purview that's terrible.

While that's true, I wouldn't imagine it would take too much to screw up Eidos' current output outside of what Wada is already doing. And everything else being terrible gets to the point where someone just needs to tell him "hey, stop it."

I'm not saying that it's nearly as bad as John's tenure under EA, but I'm just bitter.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
This is only the beginning. In the snowy blizzards of the gaming industry an even greater shadow looms. One more powerful and greater than all who cometh before him. He seeks to strike first at the heart of the swarm, but in the gold auburn of Fall his legion shall answer the call of duty. He will strike deep at the heart and free time of men. His magics of $15 map packs that actually sell extremely well go unchallenged. The world's wallets will know pain once more.
 

unbias

Member
The best option they could go with is Richard Hilleman, hands down. But they wont do that, because he is generally a good guy, in the company.
 
Origin
Bullfrog
Westwood/EALA/Danger Close
Pandemic

I'm sure there are more.

God damn it doesn't get any easier seeing this list. Anyways, even though EA is most likely beyond saving at this point, it's at least good to see that this asshole is no longer getting his cut from this consumer extortion.
 
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