May 11, 2007
EA’s D’oh! moments continue
Electronic Arts held its summer preview of forthcoming attractions in San Francisco on Wednesday, with the announcement and demonstration of The Simpsons game taking centre stage.
This is not based on the forthcoming movie. It is 8,000 lines of original dialogue from the TV show’s writers - the equivalent of three episodes.
The gameplay shown was distinctly ho-hum, but it was elevated by typical Simpsons humour. The characters are aware they are in a video game and a biting parody of the industry is promised for its release in the autumn.
It is good that EA, the world’s biggest video game publisher, is prepared to send itself and the industry up, but it’s own financial performance could become the subject of satire at the rate it is continuing to underperform.
EA can generate huge amounts of cash from its established sports franchises such as Madden NFL and series such as The Sims, but it has suffered over the past two years from games slipping, being of middling quality and generally lacking inspiration - it has failed to come up with blockbusters of its own lately to match the Halos, Guitar Heroes and Grand Theft Autos of the gaming world.
Its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday were another disappointment, but John Riccitiello, who replaced Larry Probst as chief executive last month, does seem aware of the company’s failings.
He told an analyst conference call he had been called in to drive an agenda of change: "We will focus on improving execution…my sense is that we can be faster and better focused… we’ve had some issues with predictability in our titles that we’re focused on to bring up the quality. It’s not always met our objectives," he admitted.
He said he had enormous confidence in Spore - one EA title showing genuine inspiration and being worked on by Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. But Spore was being pushed out of current fiscal year financial planning, he said, and might still be 12 months away from release.
Development of Spore began as long ago as 2000 and it was first shown at the Game Developers Conference in 2005. Despite the undoubted genius of Will Wright, the delays that EA is permitting smack of indulgence and even a little desperation about its need to prove its creative credentials.
Spore could endorse them, but it may never be enough of a financial success to justify its overlong gestation.
Lordy - Will Wright is not just a “Genius”. He’s the creator of the two biggests mainstream PC franchises in Gaming history - Sim City and The Sims.
Both these have made Electronic Arts hundreds of Millions of dollars - so he’s the most financially generative single talent they have.
Given that it was rumoured that when EA took over Maxis (the Sim City people) that they almost canned what came to be known as the Sims - it is hardly surprising that they are now just going to let Mr Wright produce what he thinks is the best possible game.
And wait for the money to roll in.
Posted by: JC | May 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm | Report this comment