EA to Rekindle its Old, Franchise-Loving Ways

Electronic Arts is abandoning its remarkable change of course in recent years, which saw the company turn from franchise-focused powerhouse into big-budget innovator. In the wake of widening losses, chief executive John Riccitiello said that the company will be concentrating only on franchises that are good for 2 million sales or more. That likely includes sports games, such as the Madden series, and sure bets such as Need for Speed, Battlefield and Mass Effect. “After that, we’ve got The Sims and Hasbro, and frankly anything that doesn’t measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be in very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward,” Riccitiello said.

Experimenting with franchises such as Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge was admirable, and I don’t really fault EA for reverting to its franchise-focused ways. Video games are, after all, a business, and companies can’t invest forever. It’s sad that Riccitiello’s hypothesis from January, that creativity and profitability go hand-in-hand, was disproved, but the experiment was fun while it lasted. There’s a bigger issue at hand here, that of innovation in the games industry and who should shoulder that burden, which I won’t get into now, but EA’s about-face is food for thought. [via Develop]