Analyst: "Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand"

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http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162530.html

Electronic Arts' game adaptation of the hit summer movie Superman Returns was originally expected to release alongside the movie in June. However, in May EA told investors that it was "prioritizing game quality higher than making that date," and so had delayed the game to coincide with the movie's release on DVD.

EA's Superman Returns finally arrived in stores last week and was met with unkind reviews. Now one industry analyst is calling the situation "a microcosm of EA's continuing woes," and pointing to it as one part of a larger downward trend for the publisher.
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EA did respond:
An EA representative has responded to Wilson's note, saying, "The EA brand is strong with great games from franchises that continue to break sales records. Across the portfolio, EA always strives to drive innovation and quality into its titles. EA continues to invest in next-generation development and technology which will translate into high quality gaming throughout the next console cycle."
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Well, as you can read, the answer is the basic marketing content free pablum.

So, what's your take on EA games quality?

By the way, let's try to keep the bashing and the snide one liners out of the thread, please.
 
I don't really consider EA any worse than other major publishers that crap out games I don't care about...

They do have a few good games though. I like the burnout/black team. I like Maxis. That's about it though.

I, honestly, think EA gets a bit more crap than they deserve -- surely they put out a lot of shit, but they are seemingly fun to hate and it's easy to ignore the good games they publish (and how many people do actually like all those crappy sports games). Everything bad they do is put under a microscope and good stuff is often ignored. Don't get me wrong though, I don't particularly care for the vast majority of their library, but I've not been ill affected by their antics -- I don't buy their bad games.
 
EA is just about the only games company that makes just about every release date. And that is the feeling i have with most of their games. The question ist not "When are we going to finish most of what we want to achieve?" but rather "What will we manage to stuff in until the set date?".

I fail to remember an EA game that gave me the feeling of really having recieved the final dose of polish.
 
EA screwed up alot of games I liked. NFS was great untill they started the underground crap. I loved nfs 2, 3 and 4 with fast cars, music that suited the game and cool tracks with alot of different looks. But than they had to turn it into some urban crap game with shitty music, booooriiiiingggg tracks (everything looks the same), stupid japatunecrap cars and only 3 oppenents. I loved RA2, but than EA released that piece of junk Generals wich isnt fun at all. The godfather? I'd much rather play 5 (?) year old mafia. And so the list goes one. Though not all games get worse. My brother actually likes Fifa alot and he thinks it gets better each year.

EA has the money and they got the manpower. If they wanted they could make almost every game into atleast a B+ title. But they choose to release bad games because they will sell anyway just because of marketing.

Oh and I also dont like EA buying alot of studios just to ruien them by milking their IP out.
 
I think when compared to a lot of smaller competitors, EA's games are considered by many to be a bit derivative. They don't seem opposed to innovation and quality, it's just that once they hit upon a successful franchise, they spend a bit too much time making money out of it and not enough advancing the genre.

That said, there is a market for that sort of thing. It's the same sort of market that buys every sequel hollywood pushes out. It's familiar, and safe, they know what they like and they stick to it. That level of quality is acceptable to them and they're happy. If there is a market for that, i say good on EA for exploiting that, as long as it doesn't trample what other companies are doing, i'm happy to just keep buying what i like
 
I don't think EA will really care what reviews say when it's apparent 90% of their sales come from people running on autopilot buying their yearly updates just because EA decided to move the pass button from x to circle or some other insignificant change.

EA have forgotten what made them big in the first place and have just improved their "franchises" a little bit every year to keep the books ticking over.

I for one would accept a brilliant "new" version of Need for Speed that I had to wait two/three years for since the last version rather than a game that is basically identical after 12 months.
 
Analysts say: The sky appears to be blue

Seriously, a little behind the curce here?

I think the developer Tiburon has had more chances than they deserve, both next-gen Madden's (2005/2006) were crap compared to what they could've been, and superman is crap too.

Seems EA Vancouver, and EA chicago do some good work, but that's about it....
 
EA's always had the production values down. I've not really played EA games where the texture work looked wrong, the colors were way off, the animations were broken, the lighting looked terrible, and the sound was bad.

But it does seem like lately, they haven't been trying as hard. Last gen, I honestly thought 007: Everything or Nothing was one of the most exciting and original games I'd played. SSX was fantastic. I thought they even did a much better job with the Lord of the Rings franchise than many other studios would have. Fight Night Round 2 was awesome as well.

But yeah, I think they've been slipping lately. Maybe all the employees that did the good stuff have left.
 
I think this starts with EA's sports titles. They have been less then stellar each year. Football is the corner stone of these games. But their Hockey, baseball, basket ball and soccer titles are getting beat out by the competition. They need to refocus their efforts on providing a good game play experience instead of gimmicky features (focus on smart and challenging AI and bug fixing.).
 
Let's also not forget the single handedly destroyed one of the best games to play on consoles. NFL licensed football games.

Before they greedily snatched all the NFL licensing rights they were at least making mediocre games compared to the far superior 2K series. Now 3 years later and we are stuck with a franchise that is in pure shambles.

When the 93 Madden for Genesis is better then the 07 version for PS3 or 360, something is seriously wrong. With as many years as they have been at it, you would of at least thought they would have EVERYTHING right, not everything wrong.

Im just counting down the next 7 years until their license runs out and we might actually see another NFL football game that is worthy of the franchise title.

Rant over.
 
I guess I cant blame them if they put out the same games every year and they still sell like crazy. I can blame the buyers though :devilish:
I mean it was already common in the early 90`s that you get a Footballgame each year, even if the only thing that changed were the players names.
 
EA knew they could not compete with 2k sports and thus bought out the most lucrative sports license in the world - the NFL. In many ways that fact says it all...
 
EA gets a bad rap, but they're large with a massive output, and some of that can be pretty good. FIFA '06 is a good game. The LOTR games have had their moments. I think they've suffered from expansionitus, looking to sell more and forgetting the whole quality thing. They got where they are today by producing great titles, and in the growth phase, they've dropped the ball. They still can have their moments though. Must be hard as a team in EA that's good to be subject of the poor reputation of the corporate entity.

Still, it'd be nice if they did get some grief, and brought into effect some better QA and add some polish to their titles. As a mission statement, they should lose the 'be the world's biggest entertainment software company by buying up absolutely everyone else' and instead have 'be the world's number one in average game scores.' Then they'd have to up the quality of all titles to push the average up.
 
Qroach said:
I think this starts with EA's sports titles. They have been less then stellar each year. Football is the corner stone of these games. But their Hockey, baseball, basket ball and soccer titles are getting beat out by the competition. They need to refocus their efforts on providing a good game play experience instead of gimmicky features (focus on smart and challenging AI and bug fixing.).
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EA Vancouver did a hell of a job on Hockey this year. It still can't match the AI and defense of the 2K series, but they took the gameplay to an entirely new level with teh addition of true puck physics, independant stick control, and a huge graphical overhaul.

That's why Tiburon's efforts with Madden seem so pathetic to me, they are probably working on 10x's the budget and can't even reinvent the game, instead doing a port with stripped features...pretty pathetic.
 
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blakjedi said:
EA knew they could not compete with 2k sports and thus bought out the most lucrative sports license in the world - the NFL. In many ways that fact says it all...
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But wasn't it the NFL and NFLPA that started a bidding war for license exclusivity? EA had no choice but to bid for it or else risk losing Madden.
 
J_Saint said:
But wasn't it the NFL and NFLPA that started a bidding war for license exclusivity? EA had no choice but to bid for it or else risk losing Madden.
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That's all well and good. But just because they are the only company that can use the NFL license, doesn't mean you have to just assume everyone will buy your product because it's the 'NFL.' They have taken a great NFL football sim product and turned it into the NFL version of NBA Jam.

EA calls their game a sim, but has WAY to many arcade type elements. Trying not to beat a dead horse here, but I think it's clear that EA has slayed the NFL football sim.

Problem is we all had hopes that EA would restore Madden to its glory because they had exclusive rights. Sadly it went the other way.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
EA screwed up alot of games I liked. NFS was great untill they started the underground crap. I loved nfs 2, 3 and 4 with fast cars, music that suited the game and cool tracks with alot of different looks. But than they had to turn it into some urban crap game with shitty music, booooriiiiingggg tracks (everything looks the same), stupid japatunecrap cars and only 3 oppenents. I loved RA2, but than EA released that piece of junk Generals wich isnt fun at all. The godfather? I'd much rather play 5 (?) year old mafia. And so the list goes one. Though not all games get worse. My brother actually likes Fifa alot and he thinks it gets better each year.

EA has the money and they got the manpower. If they wanted they could make almost every game into atleast a B+ title. But they choose to release bad games because they will sell anyway just because of marketing.

Oh and I also dont like EA buying alot of studios just to ruien them by milking their IP out.
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I'd say EA does release almost all B+ titles, they just don't release anything above that. EA games aren't bad for the most part, just generic cookie cutter games that are pushed out yearly with lots of flash added as trends change.

Better than what Sega has been doing though, possibly better than Midway and Activision (or if Activision already closed, then Atari/Infogrames), but Ubisoft and Capcom put out a good amount of A games that EA just can't touch.

Oh, and these same complaints about EA's game quality dropping happen at the beginning of every new gen of consoles. Quality drops to rush out games to sell on the new platforms (as well as to give them 'new features' to add to future additions), and efforts on the older consoles are scaled back to not take away the light from their big stuff. EA goes in cycles. EA is a business that cares only about profit, and not making master pieces, good enough to sell well enough is their motto.
 
Fox5, have you played Battlefield 2 or 2142 on the PC? Certainly not games that came out inbetween any major changes yet represent extremely buggy games, both from EA. Those two games alone make me want to bash nearly everyone at EA's heads in and then walk over the remains. Truly terribly coded games.

I have no clue how bad it is on the console front, but a quick glance at what I've played recently from EA on the PC market and its clear that the level of quality has taken a severe decline.
 
Fox5 said:
I'd say EA does release almost all B+ titles, they just don't release anything above that. EA games aren't bad for the most part, just generic cookie cutter games that are pushed out yearly with lots of flash added as trends change.

Better than what Sega has been doing though, possibly better than Midway and Activision (or if Activision already closed, then Atari/Infogrames), but Ubisoft and Capcom put out a good amount of A games that EA just can't touch.

Oh, and these same complaints about EA's game quality dropping happen at the beginning of every new gen of consoles. Quality drops to rush out games to sell on the new platforms (as well as to give them 'new features' to add to future additions), and efforts on the older consoles are scaled back to not take away the light from their big stuff. EA goes in cycles. EA is a business that cares only about profit, and not making master pieces, good enough to sell well enough is their motto.
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I agree totally, they put out a lot of 80-89% games, but almost never have anything that is real quality. When you look at a publisher like Ubisoft, that's a great example of how it should be done.
 
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