EA financials - third loss-making year in a row

Like I've been saying for ages, no matter how much gamers supposedly like Riccitiello , he's toast if they dont improve the bottom line. Kind of surprised he's still there.

And no matter how much gamers supposedly hate Activision and Kotick and yell milking, they profit.
 
It'll be interesting to see how Project Ten Dollar (their incentive program for buying a new copy of a game) changes that. Especially since it's going to now apply to their sports games.
 
Err, I doubt 1/6 the price of a new game fee, is going to change things drastically. Even if they somehow got 1:1 adoption (and it wont be anywhere close).
 
Maybe the reason for all these losses is that the PS2 allowed all of them to be incredibly inefficient publishing companies. The PS2 gave them a massive single install base so that their cheaper 2nd and 3rd tier games could make money with the lower development costs. However in this generation it seems that only companies which have controlled their costs or first tier developers which people here can spiel of a list of names have really profited.
 
Rangers said:
Err, I doubt 1/6 the price of a new game fee, is going to change things drastically. Even if they somehow got 1:1 adoption (and it wont be anywhere close).
Click to expand...

$10 directly to EA is a tidy sum when you consider a $60 game has a ton of fees invested into it for development, marketing, packaging, the retail cut, etc. If the $10 is seen as new money going right towards their costs that is a good size of money.

It may have a reverse affect though: more gamers looking used as this further devalues a new purchase.

As for EA's slide ... as others noted the split ecosystem hurt them. And contrary to the belief they have shifted to "quality" over quantity EA really hasn't had a strong presence of AAA games that have sold well. Not to mention they bought Bioware for huge money to get Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They have some big titles (Madden, Battlefield) but considering how big they are they really don't have a huge portfolio of big hits.
 
Joshua Luna said:
$10 directly to EA is a tidy sum when you consider a $60 game has a ton of fees invested into it for development, marketing, packaging, the retail cut, etc. If the $10 is seen as new money going right towards their costs that is a good size of money.

It may have a reverse affect though: more gamers looking used as this further devalues a new purchase.

As for EA's slide ... as others noted the split ecosystem hurt them. And contrary to the belief they have shifted to "quality" over quantity EA really hasn't had a strong presence of AAA games that have sold well. Not to mention they bought Bioware for huge money to get Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They have some big titles (Madden, Battlefield) but considering how big they are they really don't have a huge portfolio of big hits.
Click to expand...

I wonder how much licensing costs for Fifa, since Fifa 10 sold more than 10 million compared to Madden's 4 million. I really like this since fifa's the real football game, the kind you play with your feet and a round ball.
 
SW Tor should help them out a bit also. If in 2011 they can hit the 1m player mark at $15 a month EA /Bioware should bring in some decent money.
 
Joshua Luna said:
considering how big they are they really don't have a huge portfolio of big hits.
Click to expand...
You know how well Dante's Inferno did? I thought it was a pretty good game on the whole with quite a bit of fun in it, and EA has supported it with a constant trickle of DLC as well.
 
I believe there was just word today on a few EA games,

During their recent conference call, Electronic Arts reveals some sales data to three of the biggest 2010 games.

According to the publisher, Mass Effect 2 has sold 1.6 million units on the PC (including digital downloads) and Xbox 360. Army of Two: The 40th Day was able to sell through more than 1 million units across the PSP, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Finally, Dante’s Inferno did “almost 1 million units” on the PSP, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. All the numbers above are through the last fiscal quarter for Electronic Arts, which ended on March 31st.
Click to expand...

"Almost 1m" across three platforms, isn't that impressive nowdays.

Seems EA has a lot of medium hits. Even BFBC2 kind of falls in that category. But apparently their dev costs are too high to make money off these medium hits.
 
Yeah, as admirable it is that they're going with new IP instead of endless sequels, their stuff somehow just fails to catch the gamers' attention.

Although Army of Two is said to be a quite mediocre game, and I can see how Dante's Inferno can't reach up to God of War either. And SF RPG is obviously a niche, so as good as the Mass Effect series is, I just don't expect it to sell like 5 million copies. Even if it's apparently a pretty good 3rd person shooter at its core.
 
I wonder how much more ME2 could have sold on PS3? 500,000 more I guess. Maybe 1m? Could have helped the bottom line.

I think Crysis 2 will be big for EA though, really looking forward to that. And Rage and Bullestorm too. With the IW move also, they are gunning hard for the FPS segment which I think is the right move as I expect it to continue to entrench its genre dominance going forward.

Actually just looking at those three FPS I listed, I dont see anything from Activision approaching that for me personally. So I have to guess EA is on the right track with the partner program.
 
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MS may be asking for a much lower license fee in exchange of the exclusive deal. I'd say it might even outweigh sales of about 500K on the PS3...
Dragon Age is available on both console platforms, and sold about twice as many copies on the X360. Not worth breaking the contract with MS if you ask me.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Dragon Age is available on both console platforms, and sold about twice as many copies on the X360. Not worth breaking the contract with MS if you ask me.
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May I see the source for this? Looking at EA financials, PS3 seems to be on par with 360 for revenue generation, and that's with ME2 being 360 exclusive:


Platform 09Q4 10Q1 10Q2 10Q3 10Q4
Xbox 360 132 73 171 348 276
Wii 126 161 142 196 71
PS3 197 121 142 236 272

Total 360: 1000M
Total Wii: 696M
Total PS3: 968M
 
Laa-Yosh said:
MS may be asking for a much lower license fee in exchange of the exclusive deal. I'd say it might even outweigh sales of about 500K on the PS3...
Dragon Age is available on both console platforms, and sold about twice as many copies on the X360. Not worth breaking the contract with MS if you ask me.
Click to expand...

While ME2 wouldn't sell much on PS3, primarily because ME wasn't released on PS3, MS was the original publisher of ME so it's quite possible they didn't need to forfeit any licensing fee.
 
corduroygt said:
May I see the source for this? Looking at EA financials, PS3 seems to be on par with 360 for revenue generation, and that's with ME2 being 360 exclusive:


Platform 09Q4 10Q1 10Q2 10Q3 10Q4
Xbox 360 132 73 171 348 276
Wii 126 161 142 196 71
PS3 197 121 142 236 272

Total 360: 1000M
Total Wii: 696M
Total PS3: 968M
Click to expand...

Those are GAAP which includes deferral of revenue, where revenue generated in past quarters are recognized in later quarters.

Non GAAP revenue is actual revenue generated in the quarter.

Here the difference is
Xbox 360 1290M
PS3 979M
 
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I am talking about Dragon Age itself, a Bioware RPG released by EA and it has sold roughly twice as many copies on the X360 then on the PS3. I think it's the closest we can get to an estimate of how Mass Effect 2 would have sold, had there been a PS3 version.

I don't see what EA's other software sales, and especially Wii sales, have anything to do with this.
 
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