EA getting too big?

[CrimsonGhost]

There has been numerous reports lately of EA aggressively manouveing in the games industry, with hostile take overs etc. Is EA becoming too big? Kinda like MS.

Certainly I dont' like the way they keep buying up smaller outfits. I feel that it often results in much watered down content.

What are other peoples thoughs on the issue.

See www.eurogame.net and www.theregister.co.uk for a few of the more recent stories about EA.

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

koneko

It's worrying in a way, because they will just end up releasing titles they know sell well, like Madden and The Sims. Good/great games are ones that usually end up selling "alright" but don't sell as well as the Sims or sportsy games do.

We're only going to end up with the Reality TV and Hollywood Blockbuster equivalents of games, and original content and gaming is going to become less and less, and that's definitely a bad thing. Nintendo are still around, but for how long? EA will absorb all the smaller companies and we'll be stuck with the same re-hashed stuff we get every year.

elvis2002

EA are the devil, bad game after bad game, rehash after rehash, they make the worst games, its such a pity that have licences for everything.

ShiverinEskimo

aye, they are taking over the ones doing crap/ok. but i doubt they will ever get their grubby hands on rockstar, bungie, valve or square inix. these places have become self sufficient (yes i know bungie are owned by MS but MS have been known to produce good games from time to time). I mean name an EA game thats outselling the likes of GTA, Halo 2, Half-Life, or any of the FF? Not many i would have thought, but i am open to correction from anyone who knows better than me.

regeneration

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/charts.php

Need for Speed 2 is at number one; outselling GTA:SA at number 2.

There's no point complaining given that 70% of gamers couldn't give a toss what drivel their playing so long as Thierry Henry looks a little more/less human in FIFA2020, or if EA promise them new shiny bits to play with. Most gamers are more fickle and braindead than the average moviegoer/music-buyer.

koneko

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

I mean name an EA game thats outselling the likes of GTA, Halo 2, Half-Life, or any of the FF?

Don't forget the Sims, and it's many expansion packs. One of (if not the) best selling games on PC ever.

BrookieD

Rumor has it the EA are trying to buy KCET the machine behind Pro Evo soccer, Gotta sad lads if this happend that would make a dam fine game! Engine from Pro Evo and the glitz from EA.

Mostly EA are crap and are getting way to big, what was there last truly original game?

ShiverinEskimo

I forgot about the sims..god i hate EA. I actually don't think i own one of their games (i own about 27 on the xbox)
I mean don't they give a **** that the true heart of their target audience hate them? have i gone mad just to be asking that question...you think that the people who make the games are hardcore gamers and therefore give a damn that their peers in the world hate them.

TheDuke

big business is big business guys!

I tinhk EA have brought quite a hand full of great games - problem in the gaming world is that you can no longer sit in a garage with a few mates and develop a game as the demands have just soarded so high re gameplay, graphics, internet/lan play, modding, etc. and it needs a big investment.

ShiverinEskimo

I know, but it seems most of EA's investment goes on marketing rather than development. I think in EA's case its just a big garage with different sex toilets while they aare blowing all their cash on ad campaigns and magazine ads and paying off reviewers...I wonder how many review sites they have bought out that we don't know about.

sprinkles

take burnout 3 for a prime example of how EA can take a good game and F**k it up with all its flash ideas and promtions. Stupid EA DJ telling you how goo EA is, advertising in game and all the carp EA polishing. I hate them with a vengance!

Oh wait........ whats that I see.......... another FIFA would you believe!

ShiverinEskimo

was burnout 3 EA?? ****..i heard that game was excellent.

Cake Fiend

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

the true heart of their target audience hate them?

EA's target audience is purely the casual gamer. They don't give a crap about real gamers, they market directly toward the type of person who doesn't know anything about games.

ShiverinEskimo

Sico wrote:

EA's target audience is purely the casual gamer. They don't give a crap about real gamers, they market directly toward the type of person who doesn't know anything about games.

Fair point. But what about the developer's themselves..I'm on the assumption that you have to love games to want to develop them? Imagine one of us sitting their coding, how do they sleep at night?

Peteee

Burnout 3 is an excellent game, but it was developed by criterion (the developer, thses are the people who actaully code the games) and published by EA (put into boxes, and marketed) Although EA do actually make a lot of games in house

In Fact they are one of the few publishers who do (AFAIK, correct me if i'm wrong)

EA dont make (or publish) that many bad games tbh, its just that they are all so generic. Although a lot of them are sports games, and there is only so far you can go with them (Lets make Tiger Woods fly in the next one!!11)

Dempsey

Yea EA are in a dominant position. Especially in Sports Games because of the licences they have. If PES4 had full licencing, FIFA wouldnt be selling good at all.

Doodee

Meh, the games industry is like any other.
You are always going to have companies out for pure profit, and others that actually want to be noticed for talent.
If you place it on par with the music industry, how many good old artists with original ideas are there now as opposed to love sick puppy rock wannabes that you see?

If you go on whats being said on the net then there are big problems within EA as reguards how they treat developers. And in my humble opinion its only a matter of time before the publisher becomes second string to the developer.
You can bang all the bells and whistles onto a title as you want but once people become unhappy with a company, they remain that way.

I also heard a rumour that companies like EA will no longer be able to whack out a crappy title of a Blockbuster movie, instead it has to recieve a particular rating off a private board of reviwers or some such.

Oh Well, aslong as some people continue to produce good games I'll still play em.

ShiverinEskimo

Doodee wrote:

I also heard a rumour that companies like EA will no longer be able to whack out a crappy title of a Blockbuster movie, instead it has to recieve a particular rating off a private board of reviwers or some such.

best news i've heard in a while.

DooDee wrote:

Oh Well, aslong as some people continue to produce good games I'll still play em.

Amen Brother, Amen.

Retr0gamer

EA will probably be the end of criterion. The same thing happened with bullfrog. The working environment changed and most of the original guys left. It has now been absorbed by EA.

the saddest thing is that the previous burnout games sold next to nothing but burnout 3 sold through the roof when on the EA label.

As for EA buying out KCET. Well Konami are the second biggest games company in Japan next to Nintendo. Don't think they will be selling out soon especially since the KCET team works on almost all of konamis big releases.

irldavem

Retr0gamer wrote:

As for EA buying out KCET. ......Don't think they will be selling out soon especially since the KCET team works on almost all of konamis big releases.

I agree.

As long as we have the likes of Konami, Capcom, Square Enix, Rockstar, ID, and any other great game developers, we have nothing to worry about in terms of getting good, solid games that aren't rehashed rubbish. I really don't see any of these companies selling out any time soon, especially to EA!

STaN

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

was burnout 3 EA?? ****..i heard that game was excellent.

It is!

ObeyGiant

Sico wrote:

EA's target audience is purely the casual gamer. They don't give a crap about real gamers, they market directly toward the type of person who doesn't know anything about games.

If EA relied on "real gamers" for their bread and butter, they'd be bankrupt within a month.

sprinkles

STaN wrote:

It is!

Don't get me wrong, burnout 3 is a good game but if you compare it to burnout 2 its just too flashy for its own good. They took a great game and tried their best to f*ck it up. Thankfully it was such a good game in the beginning that you can look past all the EA gloss and enjoy it. Not true with the majority of EA's substandard tripe

sprinkles

Retr0gamer wrote:

EA will probably be the end of criterion. The same thing happened with bullfrog. The working environment changed and most of the original guys left. It has now been absorbed by EA.

the saddest thing is that the previous burnout games sold next to nothing but burnout 3 sold through the roof when on the EA label.

As for EA buying out KCET. Well Konami are the second biggest games company in Japan next to Nintendo. Don't think they will be selling out soon especially since the KCET team works on almost all of konamis big releases.

Touche, their influene is obvious in burnout 3. Criterion would never have been inclined to flash up burnout 3 if it wasn't for EA pushing them to do it, waving money in front of their faces.

I know EA don't actualy make many games but the don't exactly let hte developers make them their own way, they like to stick their hands in where they don't belong. Kinda like a bad chairman of a football club, who doesn't let their manager manage the team.

steviec

People are looking for something to complain about Burnout 3 specifically because its from EA. IMO it was the best X-Box game this year, and one of the best on PS2(PS2 version was let down by load times, obviously EA's fault). It's far better than Burnout 1 or Burnout 2. The dj guy is annoying and can be turned off within 30 seconds of first loading the game up, other than that it's hard to find any fault with the game.

Most of EA's in house games are of the highest quality. Madden is as close to perfection as a sports game can get, Fight Night is the best boxing game ever made by a long way(due to clever controls and gameplay, not due to licensing), FIFA plays a great game of football and improves every year in bigger leaps than Pro Evo does. Tiger Woods manages to make golf fun. NBA and NHL are both well polished games, although I don't like the sports they're based on so wouldn't play them much. The only bad one I can think of is Total Club Manager, and that doesn't sell.

They're villified for The Sims, probably the single most original game created in the last decade. Because they've the audacity to keep releasing new content for it which the legions of fans the game has are happy to lap up. I don't see how releasing expansion packs that people want to buy is worse than not releasing expansion packs that people want to buy. They're no more guilty of rehashing old ideas than any other company.
The only games in the all format top ten right now that aren't sequels are the Incredibles and EA's own Rogue Agent, and they're probably the worst of the bunch.

That beacon of originality, the Gamecube, has one other game in it's top ten that's not a sequel, Donkey Konga, which I've played and while it's fun it's little more than a novelty.

Sequels are not a bad thing in the games industry. A game that's been worked on and worked on and polished through 3 or 4 sequels will almost always be better than a game that's been built from the ground up in a year. When a company does come up with an original idea(eg. the Sims) why should they throw all their work in the bin and start on something new and possibly worse as soon as they're finished?

Supposing Nintendo decided they'd done the platforming thing, lets move onto something different, after the first Mario game on Nes. Or Konami decided the Metal Gear Series had run it's course on the gameboy. Sequels to sports games that you happen to not like are no worse to sequels to other games that you do like, they'll each appeal to their own audience.

User45701

The only bad thing EA did is destroy WW and ****ed up CnC in the process

Peteee

steviec wrote:

People are looking for something to complain about Burnout 3 specifically because its from EA. IMO it was the best X-Box game this year, and one of the best on PS2(PS2 version was let down by load times, obviously EA's fault). It's far better than Burnout 1 or Burnout 2. The dj guy is annoying and can be turned off within 30 seconds of first loading the game up, other than that it's hard to find any fault with the game.

Most of EA's in house games are of the highest quality. Madden is as close to perfection as a sports game can get, Fight Night is the best boxing game ever made by a long way(due to clever controls and gameplay, not due to licensing), FIFA plays a great game of football and improves every year in bigger leaps than Pro Evo does. Tiger Woods manages to make golf fun. NBA and NHL are both well polished games, although I don't like the sports they're based on so wouldn't play them much. The only bad one I can think of is Total Club Manager, and that doesn't sell.

They're villified for The Sims, probably the single most original game created in the last decade. Because they've the audacity to keep releasing new content for it which the legions of fans the game has are happy to lap up. I don't see how releasing expansion packs that people want to buy is worse than not releasing expansion packs that people want to buy. They're no more guilty of rehashing old ideas than any other company.
The only games in the all format top ten right now that aren't sequels are the Incredibles and EA's own Rogue Agent, and they're probably the worst of the bunch.

That beacon of originality, the Gamecube, has one other game in it's top ten that's not a sequel, Donkey Konga, which I've played and while it's fun it's little more than a novelty.

Sequels are not a bad thing in the games industry. A game that's been worked on and worked on and polished through 3 or 4 sequels will almost always be better than a game that's been built from the ground up in a year. When a company does come up with an original idea(eg. the Sims) why should they throw all their work in the bin and start on something new and possibly worse as soon as they're finished?

Supposing Nintendo decided they'd done the platforming thing, lets move onto something different, after the first Mario game on Nes. Or Konami decided the Metal Gear Series had run it's course on the gameboy. Sequels to sports games that you happen to not like are no worse to sequels to other games that you do like, they'll each appeal to their own audience.

Excellent post, i'd give you rep if i could

You make some great points.

The point with the sims tough, while it is original, i hate the way they've milked it so much

Or the way they use the GoldenEye brand to sell a crappy game.

The 80+ hr work weeks (even though it may be rampant throughout the games industry)

Instead of assimilating Criterion into EA, why not just continue to leave criterion well alone, publish their games, and lap up the profits anyway, instead of (what will happen) take all the talented prgrammers and artists out and get them to work on some sims expansion pack

steviec

Peteee wrote:

Excellent post, i'd give you rep if i could

You make some great points.

The point with the sims tough, while it is original, i hate the way they've milked it so much

Or the way they use the GoldenEye brand to sell a crappy game.

The 80+ hr work weeks (even though it may be rampant throughout the games industry)

Instead of assimilating Criterion into EA, why not just continue to leave criterion well alone, publish their games, and lap up the profits anyway, instead of (what will happen) take all the talented prgrammers and artists out and get them to work on some sims expansion pack

I agree on the Goldeneye thing(in my previous post I chose to call the game Rogue Agent cos it shouldn't be associated with Goldeneye), and the same goes for the 80+ hour weeks but I'd be suspicious as to how different EA are to any other big games companies when it comes to that.

I don't think they'll destroy Criterion though, they may eventually lose the name Criterion and get shuffled about, but at worst I see Burnout getting amalgamated into the Need For Speed series, taking the best bits from NFS and the best bits from Burnout. Burnout is too good and sold to well for them to mess about with it too much. And there seems to be far too much talent at Criterion(doesn't their renderware power everything from Suikoden to GTA?) for them to not be major players, and even if they do get moved around it'll only strengthen whatever EA game they're put to work on. Instead of releasing one great game per year they may contribute to ten great games per year.

Retr0gamer

If EA relied on "real gamers" for their bread and butter, they'd be bankrupt within a month.

Very true. Look at Capcom probably along with konami the last bastion of traditional hard as nails fun action games. Capcom are giving their developers free rein to produce games that are both original and excellent. but look at their sales figures. They are very low and definitely not worthy of the quality that capcom is churning out.

They're villified for The Sims, probably the single most original game created in the last decade

EA was not responsible for the Sims only the publisher. Maxis made the game. EA are churning out the expansion packs.

And there seems to be far too much talent at Criterion(doesn't their renderware power everything from Suikoden to GTA?) for them to not be major players

Have to agree that criterion are extremely talented and the renderware engine is fantastic. But then look at what happened to Bullfrog. Another group of probably the most talented developers ever that made some of the best game engines ever that was assimilated and destroyed by EA.

I don't like what EA are doing but unfortunately its the way that the industry is heading in the future.

Deadwing

This is all i have to say on the matter:




My photoshop skillz are teh l33t!

Retr0gamer

nice one deadwing

Dempsey

FIFA for a long time was utter ****e and the only reason it sold well was because of the licence it holds. They have got better in the last 3 years. PES has been better than it all that time and still is but it doesnt have a full licence which is why FIFA sales are always good.

FIFA made leaps and bounds but that was because it was absolute crap. (e.g. FIFA 97, FIFA 2000/2001)

monument

Don’t get me wrong here, EA are what they are, a public company, and they have no obligation to make good games, only games that sell.

Peteee wrote:

In Fact they are one of the few publishers who do (AFAIK, correct me if i'm wrong)

You're wrong.

steviec wrote:

They're villified for The Sims, probably the single most original game created in the last decade.

That's about the amount of time it tuck to the the bloody game to be approved. Well years anyway.

steviec wrote:

They're no more guilty of rehashing old ideas than any other company.

Nonsense.

steviec wrote:

The only games in the all format top ten right now that aren't sequels are the Incredibles and EA's own Rogue Agent, and they're probably the worst of the bunch.

More nonsense. Rogue Agent is EA’s latest Bond game, it’s a sequel (or expansion) by all means. And the Incredibles is ‘borrowed IP’, not really original…

KILLZONE is actually the only ‘original IP’, not a sequel, or as EA says part of a “franchise”, well, it may be the start of one.

steviec wrote:

Sequels are not a bad thing in the games industry.

No, sequels in them self are not. However, such a heavy reliance on sequels/franchises, and borrowed IP, is certainly a bad thing.

Big Ears

'FIFA plays a great game of football and improves every year in bigger leaps than Pro Evo does.'

I feel sorry for you................very very sorry .

steviec

Big Ears wrote:

'FIFA plays a great game of football and improves every year in bigger leaps than Pro Evo does.'

I feel sorry for you................very very sorry .

There have been more additions to FIFA in recent years than there's been to Pro Evo, most magazine reviews I've read made that point. I frequently play FIFA with friends and its always fun. I have both and happen to prefer FIFA, and I know a number of other people that do too. I also know a lot of people who prefer Pro Evo. You can't say FIFA is a bad game, it's very comfortably the second best football game on the market at least. Also, it's not like Konami are losing money on Pro Evo, the game does just fine. Both games deserve to be high in the charts and both games are high.

I notice people being very choosy, when EA produce a good game, it's thanks to the developers. When EA produce a bad game, it's EA's fault. You can't say Maxis are responbsible for the Sims and EA are responsible for the expansions. Maxis are a part of EA, Maxis made the sims and all its expansions. The company that made the Sims originally is the same company that made all the expansions. You can choose to say Maxis or you can choose to say EA, but you can't pick out the good things and call them Maxis and pick out the bad things and call them EA.

As far as I can tell being purchased by EA didn't have a major effect on Maxis, they were one trick ponies releasing various Sim games and expansions to Sim City 200 before EA bought them.

To be honest I don't know what the situation about Bullfrog was so you may be right on that one. I thought that most of the people in Bullfrog are now Lionhead and EA published Black & White so relationships can't be that bad, although I could be completely wrong on that matter.

steviec

While googling for information about Bullfrog I came across this article:

http://news.spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=6217

That's dated 19th Feb, but I couldn't find any more info. Anything know any more about this project? I hope its still being worked on, Syndicate was my favourite Megadrive game(never got used to the mouse controls when playing on computer)

It does seem most of Bullfrog's staff are still floating around EA then.

Retr0gamer

There were only a handful of people working for bullfrog when they were with EA. This quickly bloated to hundreds. Most if not all the original staff and the most talented designers have left EA. The Bullfrog team is probably what was left of the team and probably consists of the additional staff EA added on and even this group has probably gone through a huge turn over of staff.

Do you really think Maxis would have released as many expansions if they weren't working for EA. The Maxis team used to make some fabulous 'sim' franchise games that all differed in gameplay. I feel sorry for the team now because they are being forced to produce nothing but Sims add-on packs.

steviec

The fact that Maxis produced the Sims at all shows they have freedom under EA. On paper that game didn't sound like a big seller at all, it was more like an experimental artificial life simulator.

Sim Earth, Sim Ant, Sim Farm etc. were never really very good games. In fact they mention on the timeline on their own website that they were under pressure from execs to release four games in 1996 and with limited resources they threw out a bunch of SimBlah games and a pinball game. That was in the days before EA.

Since being bought they pretty much haven't produced a bad game, Sims & Sims 2 are both good games, and the expansion packs do what they say on the tin. They've also released new additions to their other favourite franchise, Sim City(and it hasn't lost the humour of the old days), and they've also made Sim Golf, which certainly wasn't a result of pressure from marketing people, and is another very fun little game but it never particularly sold. I saw an interview with Will Wright recently and he doesn't seem to be someone who isn't doing what he wants to be doing.

Dempsey

steviec wrote:

There have been more additions to FIFA in recent years than there's been to Pro Evo, most magazine reviews I've read made that point.

Why do ya think that is? FIFA had to make huge changes to keep into PES's gameplay. FIFA latest is good but I still prefer PES's gameplay.

monument

steviec wrote:

I notice people being very choosy, when EA produce a good game, it's thanks to the developers. When EA produce a bad game, it's EA's fault. You can't say Maxis are responbsible for the Sims and EA are responsible for the expansions. Maxis are a part of EA, Maxis made the sims and all its expansions. The company that made the Sims originally is the same company that made all the expansions. You can choose to say Maxis or you can choose to say EA, but you can't pick out the good things and call them Maxis and pick out the bad things and call them EA.

As far as I can tell being purchased by EA didn't have a major effect on Maxis, they were one trick ponies releasing various Sim games and expansions to Sim City 200 before EA bought them.

Can I stress to you how long and how hard the top people in Maxis fought convincing the company to make the Sims in the first place? Then how hard it was to stop EA's attempts to can the work in progress?

steviec

monument wrote:

Can I stress to you how long and how hard the top people in Maxis fought convincing the company to make the Sims in the first place? Then how hard it was to stop EA's attempts to can the work in progress?

That's quite interesting and I didn't know about that. As I said it just didn't sound like a money maker on paper.

Good to see that Maxis had the convictions to stick with it and showed that if a developer really believes in the idea they can convince the publisher to go along with it.