EA posts $1 billion loss
Electronic Arts has posted a huge loss this year, despite an effort to bring new titles to market.
Unfortunately though, the mega-publisher also managed to accrue a net loss of USD 1.1 billion, which is another increase for the company. Electronic Arts only lost USD 454 million last year.
Despite trying to bring new franchises to market in the last few years, EA has struggled to find financial security in the face of the global recession and has had to close some studios and fire some staff in an effort to streamline the business.
Despite some of the hardships faced by the publisher, CEO John Riccitiello has remained optimistic and assures gamers that the company will persevere through the economic crisis successfully. Recession, says Riccitiello, is a good thing for gamers.
"EA's strong cost actions in Q4 FY09 together with our investments in our digital service businesses will set us up for a stronger" Riccitiello said to Eurogamer. "EA is well positioned with the right strategies in a growing industry."
How do you think EA will fare in the years to come? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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21 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replybut i agree a bit more time and care over games goes a long way
It's got to the point now that I won't buy a EA game until I know its working as it should, I always wonder why reviews gloss over game breaking bugs in games, like mirrors edge.
+1
Will EA increase quality, hoping that will entice gamers, or will they dumb down further with cheap tat franchise games? I predict the latter. The Sims 3 anyone?
I always say, turnover is worthless, if you get turned over.
poor ole EA.....
Also westwood was awesome, I died a little inside when they got take over.
Big conglomerate developers such as EA can lead to crappier games, in my opinion. Small companies will spend the extra time to put a quality product out the door because they know a good game can mean their ultimate survival or utter failure.
EA can afford to churn out crappy games for a time, but perhaps they've been doing this too much. They are reporting a loss that would make any company cringe. A company's purpose is to make money. If it continues to lose money at an increasing rate, there is something wrong.
Pretty much every game they release has turned into a annual improvement free orgy of sequels.
Then there is another issue, games are too often released full of bugs, also they don't release enough patches to fix whats broken and often those patches are late.
On top of that, they have a digital distribution system which does not work in most cases.
Some has to be blamed on the DRM infection.