EA CEO John Riccitiello Resigns

[Bull_Dozer]

Dropping the exclusive NFL license would be amazing.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Make way for Peter Moore.

If Peter Moore get promoted to CEO, I will so laugh. His statements would have came true. I remember years ago when he was the head of Sega he once said he will be in charge one way or the other, of all the other gaming companies out there, even of his then rival EA.

Sure enough he worked for Microsoft, then became president of EA Sports and now is currently EA's COO. So more then likely he will be the next CEO.

[Cubfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

People forget, it simply isn't just Sim City, but also the failure of the relaunch of the Medal of Honor series, the failure of what happened to the NBA Live series, the failure of Diablo 3, the failure of EA MMA, the mess they turned the Dragon Age series into, the mess the Fight Night series turned into. So yeah....those things add up.

The failure of Diablo 3?! The game sold millions of copies and is the reason online DRM will continue on. It was also not made or published by EA. Lets see if anything changes with Mr Riccitiello stepping down.

[ghettogeeksta]

Quote: Originally Posted by DubTrey1

Drop exlusive deals all around for EA in order to grow revenue as well as stakeholder shares. The games themselves can become again the strength for EA, same as Rock* is the industry leader for sandbox games - even though many others try and do well enough - Rock* is the standard. EA can once again be the leader in these areas of strength. 2k has managed to do so wothout exclusive license to NBA titles, so why not do the same as they do - build a great product, share the market and become unquestioned leader amidst others whom try to catch up to you in a share of the same genre? Lets hope they right the mis-steps they have internally and grow thier devs, project leads and those whom are in the core business of making the titles - rather than lining the bottom line as they have so long now. It's hurt them as well as the industry - not to mention the lack of depth and creativity within the company in some of thier strongest historical titles.

I agree, so many companies forget what got them to the top once they are at the top. What made EA was making good games, striving to be better than the competition but they forgot where they came from. Once they got to the pinnacle they changed focused, they went from focusing on making good/realistic games to focusing on making as much money as they can; they started purchasing exclusive licenses, thinking they had it made in the shade, but at the end of they day, people want good games, and if you don't make good games people wont buy (some people, its scary how many people still think Madden is a good game). Hopefully the new CEO will drop these exclusive licenses and go back to the roots, making good and embrace competition.

[pietasterp]

The thing is, we look at this stuff as consumers/gamers, and we hope that EA makes moves towards becoming a company that makes great games again because that's what we (justifiably) care about. And I agree that if they do that, it could be a path back to profitability.

The problem is, from the perspective of the only people that EA really cares about - the shareholders - EA might as well be selling CD's (dating myself), boxes of candy, cardboard boxes, or whatever widget commodity you want to imagine. It's a natural business cycle; when a company gets really big, they get homogenized and whatever else they used to do or be, they just become "Big Corporation X" at a certain scale. They begin to care about doing business, not about doing whatever it was that got them to that position in the first place. And once they are publicly traded, they care only about the shareholders, who don't care about good games - they care about a profitable business model. If EA management had any reason to believe they could get their share price back up by releasing nothing but 99-cent or freemium mobile games that are essentially bite-sized 3-4 minutes experiences - say Angry Birds or some such -they would transition the whole company to that model ASAP. And they may actually have some reason to believe that may work, so look out...

Re: the NFL license, I suspect that's still a net money-maker for them, so it wouldn't make sense for them to ditch that license (depending on how future negotiations go). Although I really have no idea if that's true or not, so probably take that with a grain of salt.

[speels]

Yea, I really don't feel that this will lead to EA dropping the NFL exclusive license. If anything, I can see them trying to re-up it for even longer. Right now there is NO competition in one of the biggest video game markets, NFL football, so why would they want to allow another developer to come in and take away market share. Of course this would be good for the consumer because it forces EA to up their game and make a better product or lose more market share. Why would EA want this as it would force the Madden series to cost even more because you would have to bring in even more developers, artists, etc to keep up. It's not like Madden can't improve, it just hasn't.

What I am really hoping for is that the new CEO actually starts cutting highly paid executives that are basically useless. It always happens in companies that become very successful. The top gets over valued, and when they need to cut costs, it's the people that work under them that take the hit. Of course in video games those are the really important people because they make the games better and still love their jobs.

I mean if I have and exec that makes $250,000 and it costs me $40,000 per video game maker, why would I not cut the exec and hire 6 new video game designers. It makes sense to everybody that the new designers would bring more to the table than the 1 exec, but until a business completely changes the way they think, this never happens.

I guess I will just have to wait and see what changes get made before I choose if this was good or bad.

[pietasterp]

Quote: Originally Posted by speels

I mean if I have and exec that makes $250,000 and it costs me $40,000 per video game maker, why would I not cut the exec and hire 6 new video game designers. It makes sense to everybody that the new designers would bring more to the table than the 1 exec, but until a business completely changes the way they think, this never happens.

I'm pretty sure the execs make a might bit more than 250k....but I generally agree with your post. The problem is re-structuring has to be done intelligently - anyone can come in and whack 15% off the top/bottom, but doing it in a way that makes sense and helps improve the company is the key. I feel like this is becoming the Wall Street Journal comments section now, but unfortunately, that's what gaming discussions have come to in 2013....(sad face)

[wisdom less13]

Who cares? They're still going to push out games for coin. They get kudos of Battlefield running strong for a while now, but the memory that game takes up is crazy. The sport games are getting a bit stale to me. I recently bought NHL 13, and I'm mostly a franchise guy, but have played EASHL exclusively. There's something not right. I can't figure it out what it is, though. Back on subject...Eff this guy.