Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180
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Soulskill
from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.
from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting:
"EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Re:Times have changed (Score:5, Funny)
EA doing something bad???? (Score:2, Funny)
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...sive waist sizes usually associated with them, as gamers will start actually getting out there and experiencing the joys of the real world.
Of course there will always be a need for mas...
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Recommended businesses for EA: (Score:4, Funny)
Things that, from what I know about the typical EA manager character, should fit them: ...Oh, wait!
- Weapon dealer / Warlord: Fueling wars by selling weapons to both sides, just to make money.
- Pharma industry: Getting school children on hard drugs sold as medicine, just to make money.
- Competition for Monsanto: genetically engineer slowly killing plants and make the whole world plant and eat them, just to make money.
- Music industry: Artist extortion and media reproduction, just to make money...
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...ters thesis topic. That has to do with the sexual habits of mas...
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terbatation. After all, gamers gotta get off, and someones gotta do it. Definitely not my mas...
C-C-C-C-Combo-breaker!
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terdons, which actually have a long, and exciting courtship ritual, involving lots of mas...
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...tication which is necessary for proper digestion of their food and better overcoming the diabetes from those years of sitting on their posteriors. But that does not really answer the questions about their mas...
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As my friends used to say about Battlefield 2.... (Score:3, Funny)
Why get it right the first time when you can release a dozen 500MB patches?
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...sage to the trunks: long vigorous, strokes, growing up in a crescendo. Golly! It was as enjoyable to them as mas...
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...ks.
On a completely unrelated note, Natalie Portman is mas...
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...sive disappointment with the world as it is. Rather than work to fix issues with personal appearance and the world at large, a lifetime of video games and distraction - particularly in the world's richest country, where the entertainment industry represents 4% of GDP - have encouraged them to avoid that which makes them uncomfortable, or to gloss over it before heading back to endless diversion.
Sorry, guys, they can't all be funny.
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...ter debaters, whose eloquent speeches argue that the eating habits of teenagers have been on a steady decline for decades, and in order to burn more calories teenagers must engage in more mas...