An Empire's Downfall

Electronic Arts (EA), once known as the most influential and most powerful publisher in the industry, has been losing market share -- Activision Blizzardʼs, since it’s historical merger, has been eating up EAʼs share of the market with ease, with franchises like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty theyʼve got the right mix to woe gaming consumers in purchasing their overdone sequels and ʻsqueezed to the last dropʼ intellectual properties - which EA simply did so exemplary well.

One obvious way for EA to come crawling back to the top - create more original IPs. Black for the PS2 and Xbox was a great effort. I personally loved the game, perhaps if they do more of that through different genres they’d have a whole lineup of titles to rule the industry once more.

Acquiring Take Two with its gem - Grand Theft Auto and some worthy titles such as Bioshock - might help EA in the short term but to regain its market leading position they’d need a whole new excellent lineup of games, alleviating that stigma on the quality of their titles amongst gamers.

What happened to EA was a case of overdone corporate bull over creativity. Profits over quality, quantity over quality which were so ignorantly pursued -- really, how sustainable can that be? Sure Psychonauts barely sold any copies and yet it was a critical success but EA has the marketing arm to sell a new IP which the mentioned game didn’t have.

It’s the norm to say that it’d be an oxymoron to state in a phrase, “EA and New IP.”

Make that change EA, make gamers respect you again.


1 comments:

cemijares said...

Nice lines!

"case of overdone corporate bull over creativity".. You hit the point where under-structured,over-resourced, under-managed,over-inebriated corporations proclaim their stake at art, which they duly sacrifice for boodle.

"Profits over quality, quantity over quality which were so ignorantly pursued -- really, how sustainable can that be?" ... I actually felt the emotions here man ;)