EA games is posting a loss. Why am I not surprised?

[profbutters]

I was interested to see this in the paper this morning:

LA TImes Business section, December 10th.  "Electronic Arts Inc., which produces such franchises as the Sims and Madden NFL, said Tuesday that it probably would miss sales and profit targets for its fiscal year because of disappointing holiday sales in North America and Europe."

Disappointing holiday sales.  Ya think?  I'd been thinking for ages that they should have worked out their problems with Aspyr in time to get at least one EP and maybe two SPs ported for Mac for the holidays.  Mac owners would have rejoiced, asking for them for Christmas, buying them with gift cards at the Apple Store.  Now, after the holidays, people will go back to being frugal.  Harder to sell ports of new stuff then.

According to the article, which you can find here, video games are considered to be a relatively healthy sector in a recession, because consumers choose less expensive forms of entertainment.  They eat in more, go out less.  Video games are fairly cheap. And overall, the industry is still going to post a gain.  But EA didn't do as well with Spore as they thought they would.  First releases of new games often take a while to catch on.  So you would think . . .porting games you already have?  I'm not betting on it:

"Company spokesman Jeff Brown said consumers this year were buying more intensely from among the top five bestselling games, whereas in the past they had spread their purchases more among the top 20. So publishers are deciding to make fewer titles.

'We are going to make some changes in our publishing strategy to publish fewer games but making bigger bets on them,' Brown said. 'But that does not mean we will stop taking creative risks.' "

I don't know how sorry to feel for the suits who helped create this silliness. I do, however, feel very sorry for the workers who will be laid off.  I wonder if this will delay the release of the Sims 3? 

In other entertainment news, there may be an actor' strike, which, if authorized, would begin in January.  This is why Summit is so crazy to be shooting for a November 2009 release date of *New Moon*--they're going to have enough obstacles that they might as well leave an extra six months and do the thing properly.

We almost had a strike at my university.  It was called off at the last minute.  The times, they are a goin' hard.

Ugh, have to get up early for exams--four hours and some paperwork, and possibly no chance for lunch.  Blech.

Comments

[fireflowersims.livejournal.com]

I will headdesk muchly if the actors do strike. I mean, I'll understand why, and under any other circumstances I would completely support them. But during this economy, when they'd be hurting so many people in the process? Baaaaad idea. At least the writers got a lot of sympathy from outside sources. If the actors strike now? Forget it.

And oh, EA. All I can do at this point is sigh and roll my eyes, really. I'm actually really curious about how ts3 will do when it debuts. Will as many people move on to it as they think will? I'm not going to judge based on the few comments I've been reading online, but I can see it going either way.

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

They've been talking about EA missing their profit goals for a while now. I think if it weren't for SecuROM, Spore would have sold better and been pirated less.

I do hope they suck it up and port the EPs at least for you. I know you'd love some of the SPs, but at least you get new interactions and stuff with the EPs.

Last year was the writers' strike, now an actors' strike... I agree with De, this is NOT the time for actors to strike.

[fairyworshiper.livejournal.com]

UGGGGGH
Stupidstupidstupidstupid
MACS DESERVE GAMES TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*grumblegrumblegrumblegurmble*
and the way they move any post about macs on the BBS without even looking at it is just cruel.

I don't think that EA should be very surprised about it though, they haven't been very nice towards their customers and the customers are always right.

[wtsims.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate that EA is being stupid about the ports. I mean, if they'd never made the decision to port the game in the first place, I could maybe understand that. But to do it partway and then stop is just dumb. Even I'm frustrated over it, and I don't even own a Mac!

If it were a lot earlier in the cycle I might suggesting dual booting but considering what you'd have to replace it's not worthwhile now, unless, um, you win the lottery or something, in which case you could just buy a gaming box with Windows on it anyhow.

The thing that gets me about this is... it's far easier these days to port games to the Mac thanks to the switch to Intel chips, and more and more companies are doing it because of that. Why they would pick now to drag their feet, I don't know. Unless their Mac sales have been truly abysmal, and I don't think that's the case, it's just another bad business decision from EA.

Spore's sales were, IIRC, about half what they'd projected. That wasn't a new game not taking off, that was a game that should've sold insane copies selling... well, insane copies, but not on the level they'd thought it would. Which generally is considered to mainly be because of the controversy over SecuROM (not at all helped by the fact that the free, downloadable creature creator contained it). Certainly it's why I don't own it. I bought GalCiv 2 instead, so I can build ships instead of... uh, whatever you would call Spore creations.

[wtsims.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to say: Jeff Brown is an idiot and that strategy is going to sink EA if they stick with it. I'd laugh about it, but I know someone who works there. (As far as I know, not on the Sims, as he's a console programmer, but his NDAs make it impossible for me to be sure.)