News
Riccitiello: EA made mistakes with studio acquisitions
Michael French Feb 11 2008, 12:40pm
Comments (5)
EA CEO admits publisher 'blew it' in regard to Bullfrog and Westwood acquisitions
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has admitted the company made mistakes when it acquired well-known developers.
Speak at DICE last week, he said that integrating the teams at independents such as Bullfrog, Westwood and Origin ultimately
stifled the creative talent there: "We at EA blew it, and to a degree I was involved in these things, so I blew it."
For the full story, head over to the internet's number one destination for news and features dedicated to games development, Develop.
Comments
“Again?”
Posted by: LtCm_Data - Feb 11, 1:38pm
These guys are pretty big on repenting at the moment.
“Re: Again?”
Posted by: Pantythief - Feb 11, 3:05pm
Yeah, tell me about it!!
When it was announced that Activision and Blizzard were merging, Assassins Creed had proved a success and COD4 took the top spot for Christmas, EA we're giving it large and saying things like 'bring it on, we love competition' and 'this will only bring out the best in us'
Suddenly, they're considering giving away the new Battlefield on PC for free and making statements like this?!
Sounds like they've accepted that they're going to take a back seat for while (hopefully for ever.....) and that they should at least come across like they we're expecting it before they look too embarrassed.
“Re: Again?”
Posted by: MrJolly - Feb 11, 3:50pm
Not to mention the ea.com and simns online debacles. Not very clever was it, buy loads of teams/companies and then try to merge them thus breaking up the original reasons why they were purchased in the first place.
That said it was all 5-6 years ago so it's a bit late now. Fat Babies had a smashing write up on this, so many gifted people lost their job while the muppets who organized it all kept theirs.
“Re: Again?”
Posted by: Dhalsim - Feb 11, 4:31pm
@ Pantythief
*YAWN* And why on earth would you want EA to "take a back seat forever". Surely you aren't falling back on the tired old rhetoric about EA 'destroying the industry with endless sequels' and various other ill-judged nonsense? EA's business model would not be the tremendous success it is were it not for the buying decisions of the public. It's not EA's fault if millions of people continue to buy its games, is it?
“Re: Again?”
Posted by: Pantythief - Feb 12, 9:39am
@ Agent46
Fair point but those 'millions of people' buying EA's lazy updates has dictated the choice on offer to me when I want to buy a game.
That has made me very bitter.......
Also, lets not forget that the 'buying decisions' that those millions of people have made have been heavily influenced by very big marketing budgets, which could have quite easily been spent on promoting new IP or quite simply something other than NFS or FIFA.
I could ramble on about how Sony, Microsoft and several other major publishers are just as bad but this post is about EA.
So in response to your comments, yes, I know its tired and I know its old but so is my SNES and I will defend that console, along with my views on the industry til the day I die.
fin.