EA facing massive loss

[Gord]

According to german SPIEGEL Online, EA is facing up to 100 millions of loss this year.
Stocks have apparently lost ~5% in value after the announcement.

Contributing are, according to EA, investments into games for the next generation of consoles (cited as ~80 mil), but it is suspected that sub-par performance of important projects like TOR (only 1,3 million subscribers, down from 1,7 in February) is contributing.

Shareholders won't be pleased, as the quarterly figures are going to be published tomorrow...

Edit: Incidentally, Golem.de has some more information, pointing out that EA did in fact make profit in 2011.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

So TOR is going free to play soon?

 

[nihil]

Is it finally happening?

 

[Infinitron]

Is ITZ finally happening?

fixed

 

[Angthoron]

Would be amusing if EA invested into developing for next-gen consoles and then Sony and MSoft came out and said "Lol, j/k, we release it in 2 years"

Ah well, won't happen that way but would be amusing anyway.

 

[SCO]

hold the line

edit: hoverdog, fixed

 

[hoverdog]

hold the end of rine

 

[Phelot]

Weren't there hints that some Korean MMO company was thinking of buying them?

Also, inb4 pirates are blamed.

 

[Menckenstein]

EA facing MASSIVE loss

So Chris Priestly didn't quit?

 

[sea]

Now it's just Activision. Maybe if we're really lucky, Black Ops 2 and Diablo 3 will tank...

 

[sgc_meltdown]

companies are not entitled to growth, deal with it maturely please
investors should remember to manage their expectations

 

[Oriental European]

Black Ops 2 and Diablo 3 will tank...

Impossible.

 

[RK47]

Mind boggles at how much they spent on making/marketing games.
TOR - 1.7 million copies sold. That's a lot of money. Even with subs down, 14 million a month isn't good enough? What the fuck?
Battlefield 3 wasn't a failure either. Though they sold a full weapon unlock pack for $39.99 -
Mass Effect 3? Aside from angry fans - it sold a lot too within the first month.
So what exactly is the biggest chunk of loss coming from? Are they spending too much on ad or what?

 

[SCO]

Didn't Tor had a dirty trick with that? Free one month wasn't actually the first month or something?

 

[Kane]

EA boss John Riccitiello weighed in on the Star Wars: The Old Republic success debate, saying the game was "very much in line with our original assumptions".

 

[Wise Emperor]

I recently played Syndicate. I raged hard at raping the franchise but I honestly can say that new Syndicate is better than comparable Call of Duty franchise. Not that it is some achievement.

Then I found out 3 things about this game which probably contribute to EA losses:
1. Big names doing VA : Brian Cox & Rosario Dawson
2. Shitty dubstep stars : Skrillex & Nero (terrible!)
3. Shitty story writer : Brit sci-fi author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Morgan (story is so retarded and predictable that Gaider writing seems like modern Dostoevsky)

If you sign big names, pay them big monies and they do hack job, your company will sink. Sink quickly.

 

[Infinitron]

I recently played Syndicate. I raged hard at raping the franchise but I honestly can say that new Syndicate is better than comparable Call of Duty franchise. Not that it is some achievement.

Then I found out 3 things about this game which probably contribute to EA losses:
1. Big names doing VA : Brian Cox & Rosario Dawson
2. Shitty dubstep stars : Skrillex & Nero (terrible!)
3. Shitty story writer : Brit sci-fi author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Morgan (story is so retarded and predictable that Gaider writing seems like modern Dostoevsky)

If you sign big names, pay them big monies and they do hack job, your company will sink. Sink quickly.

Yep. There's a weird thing going on here. On one hand, the publishers enslave their developers and turn them into annual release assembly lines. They nickel and dime you with DLC, squeezing out as much profit as they can.
On the other hand, they spend profligately on this vanity shit that nobody cares about.

The AAA videogame industry is schizophrenic - one leg in Hollywood and the other leg in Walmart. No wonder they keep making mistakes.

 

[toro]

Schizo you say, schizo might be.

 

[Excidium]

So TOR is going free to play soon?

Warhammer Online flopped almost 4 years ago and it still requires a subscription to play, so that's very unlikely.

 

[CorpseZeb]

Everyone knows history of Hollywood? Especially that time in the late 40, when a big movie companies must face a competition from new Television media? Today, "new" indie wave is rising (meaning: growing awareness of it is rising) , history repeats itself, maybe.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

EA has been doing some testing of the waters with indie games development, so they're not entirely stupid when it comes to that. The big chain around their necks will nearly always be the fact they're a public company, so they have to do a few backflips here and there to show investors something. You know, I understand that game development costs a lot these days, but it really didn't back when these companies went IPO.

 

[TripJack]

EA ... indie games

good one

 

[kazgar]

Just read elsewhere, need to find confirmation.

Regarding the TOR numbers:

The currently have 1.3mil but that is counting people who only play on free weekends (yep, they made it free2play on weekends). It's a sinking ship.

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-mmo-pulling-talent-away-from-dragon-age-team

"Dragon Age III appears to have slipped to FY:14. We had previously expected the next Dragon Age to be released in Q4:13, two years after its predecessor. However, we believe that a significant portion of the BioWare team responsible for the game was reassigned to Star Wars in order to create content and fix bugs to keep the game's audience engaged," Pachter commented.

 

[Gold]

Just read elsewhere, need to find confirmation.

Regarding the TOR numbers:

The currently have 1.3mil but that is counting people who only play on free weekends (yep, they made it free2play on weekends). It's a sinking ship.

They also gave a free month to anybody with a level capped character even if they had walked away months ago. This was done in April and the 1.3 Million number comes from the end of that free month. I doubt they have a 1 million people playing right now.