EA didn’t anticipate Wii’s popularity
In a lengthy report by The San Jose Mercury News, it was discovered that Electronic Arts happened to underestimate the popularity of the Nintendo Wii. Now quickly rising over in sales over all platforms, the Wii is quickly becoming “a distinct possibility” of becoming the dominant console for the entire market in the eyes of some analysts.
As one of the publishing giants in North America, EA is often treated as the microtransaction, multi-platform king of game publishers. They have often geared themselves with constant research and development for delivering bleeding edge games on new platforms even before they launch, but happened to find themselves at a serious drop in financial performance.
Things just didn’t work out for the publisher. Its games which are geared toward the Sony PlayStation Portable found “limited demand,” although games for the PlayStation 2 continue to do well even beyond the system’s life cycle. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough for the giant.
Games for the next gen platforms became too big – development costs and timetables skyrocketed like a thermometer on a black leather seat under the Sahara sun. When faced with the current generation of consoles, game developers knew they had it easy – easy enough that they reassured longer support for the older consoles. That might no longer be true for the new wave of game platforms, analysts seem to insinuate.
Click on Full Article for a lengthier analysis on Electronic Arts and analyst views on next-gen development.
In a lengthy report by The San Jose Mercury News, it was discovered that Electronic Arts happened to underestimate the popularity of the Nintendo Wii. Now quickly rising in sales over all platforms, the Wii is quickly becoming “a distinct possibility” of becoming the dominant console for the entire market in the eyes of some analysts.
As one of the publishing giants in North America, EA is often treated as the microtransaction, multi-platform king of game publishers. They have often geared themselves with constant research and development for delivering bleeding edge games on new platforms even before they launch, but happened to find themselves at a serious drop in financial performance.
Things just didn’t work out for the publisher. Its games which are geared toward the Sony PlayStation Portable found “limited demand,” although games for the PlayStation 2 continue to do well even beyond the system’s life cycle. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough for the giant.
Games for the next gen platforms became too big – development costs and timetables skyrocketed like a thermometer on a black leather seat under the Sahara sun. When faced with the current generation of consoles, game developers knew they had it easy – easy enough that they reassured longer support for the older consoles. That might no longer be true for the new wave of game platforms, analysts seem to insinuate.
Electronic Arts is often eyed as a major game industry entity focused on delivering games to the core market. And with exclusive franchises such as Madden NFL and popular ones such as FIFA, the giant succeeded continuously in the last cycle with realistic graphics and the latest games from popular franchises.
Today, however, analysts and third-party onlookers believe that Electronic Arts might have to rethink that strategy. Granted that the games targeted for the Wii console aren’t as visually stunning as those on the competition, analysts suggest that they cannot be catered on any other platform given their unique control interface with the Wiimote.
Nintendo itself is starting to woo the hardcore base by offering a chance to dive into gameplay immersion, as opposed to visual immersion, through a different game experience. But it’s tough on the Japanese gaming giant, and the Wii might still remain as a leisure tool for casual gamers.
But Electronic Arts seems to agree with analysts. “We didn’t anticipate the popularity of the Wii, but we moved very quickly to get into position on that,” said Electronic Arts’ spokesman Jeff Brown. The company had seen their recent lineup of Wii games outsell every other publisher on the Wii, except Nintendo itself.
So in this fiscal year, EA will be shifting from a mediocre four titles for the Wii to a whopping 10 to 13 titles. If all goes well, EA may very well keep true to what Nollenberger Capital Partners’ Todd Greenwald speculates. “This transition does seem to be a bit more painful for EA,” said the analyst, adding that “EA is the 800-pound gorilla. They’re always going to be dominant.”
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