EA In Financial Struggles Blame WoW

[MPUK News]

According to an article over on <a href="http://www.techspot.com">Techspot</a>, Publishing powerhouse Electronic Arts are in for some tough financial stuggles.

Not only have profits in the last Quarter of 2004 dropped (the period EA was banking on for huge Christmas sales)but several class-action law suits have been filed against them by shareholders for misleading them and the public before they announced their profit drop.

EA blame the huge hit MMO, <i>World of Warcraft</i> in part for their poor performance over Christmas and also the lack of PS2 consoles available during the peroid.

Read more about it <a href="http://www.techspot.com/story17272.html"> here</a>.

Posted By: Elbonio

[Baz]

EA blaming it on others rather than thier utterly shocking portfolio of games in the last year is just short sighted and foolish, they've released nothing but sequels, updates and poorly made licence games (The lord of the rings RTS for example)

BF2 and red alert 3 will bail them out somewhat this year but could it be that people are finally getting bored of buying fifa games that are exactly the same as last years?

Maybe...;)

[Afty]

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for an industry giant that is killing innovation in PC games, and slave-drives its staff.

[RocketKnight]

That's going to be their new slogan.

"EA Games. < whisper >It's not our fault.< /whisper >"

[andyf]

Suck it down, EA.

[Joey]

EA are one of the few companies who make M$ look positively angelic and guardians of moral and ethical standards

not content with reducing westwood studios to a mere shadow of its former self, the management seem determined to ensure that competetive gaming remains nothing more than a fantasy by refusing to update their bug-ridden games

generals zero hour 1.02 for instance has a known list of issues as long as all the cocks in a gay porn movie, yet they won't patch it because it's not going to make them any money (despite the poor PR and reduced likelihood of other companies licensing the game engine)

[Elbonio]

"EA Games - Sell Everything"

[10G0]

EA Games - donations welcome

[andyf]

I was positively overjoyed to read important RTS-genre people have been leaving EA, some of them going back to their previous groups / companies to make actual good games again.

[TimmyNoShoes]

Originally posted by Joey[kins]
EA are one of the few companies who make M$ look positively angelic and guardians of moral and ethical standards

not content with reducing westwood studios to a mere shadow of its former self, the management seem determined to ensure that competetive gaming remains nothing more than a fantasy by refusing to update their bug-ridden games

generals zero hour 1.02 for instance has a known list of issues as long as all the cocks in a gay porn movie, yet they won't patch it because it's not going to make them any money (despite the poor PR and reduced likelihood of other companies licensing the game engine)

They updated to 1.03 over a month ago, however that is even MORE bug ridden.

[Freelance]

EA thrive off the big market games they can put out year after year. anything remotely popular (BF, C&C) they buy in and mass produce. it'll take more than 10 WoWs to kill them though

[no friends]

EA games - profits are everything

[Freelance]

Originally posted by no friends
EA games - profits are everything yep - http://investor.ea.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=88189&p=irol-irhome
they're not the only company on the planet who wants to make a profit, but others like ubisoft at least look like they make an effort on making a leisure product first and foremost a game instead of a profit opportunity.
could you ever see EA making Warcraft3, Beyond good and evil, call of duty, or allowing valve or id the development times they want? the impression i get is that any good games that are published by EA either are developed by a separate studio (DiCE, lionhead, westwood...). i fear for crytek seeing as they were bought (IIRC), but at least ubi own the rights to farcry (xbox and pc expansion) so it forces them to make something original