Electronic Arts warns on profits

[initialised]

Video game giant Electronic Arts (EA) has issued another profit warning saying that holiday sales had been worse than expected.
At the end of October, EA warned on profits and announced plans to cut between 500 and 600 jobs.
Now it has said that its performance will fall short of already low forecasts, although it will not make an updated forecast until February.
EA publishes games such as Fifa Soccer, Left 4 Dead, Rock Band and Spore.
The company said it had been hit by the growing market share of Nintendo's Wii console, because Nintendo also makes most of the top-selling games for the console.
EA said it would now try to make additional cuts to its costs on top of those announced in October. It did not say how many more jobs would be cut.
Analysts said that some of EA's titles, such as Dead Space and Left 4 Dead, had been selling well, but that others, such as Need for Speed Undercover, Mirror's Edge and the latest instalment in the Rock Band franchise, had been disappointing.
EA's shares had fallen 11.5% before the announcement was made and dropped another 10% in electronic after-hours trading.

Source: BBC

[randomizer]

EA forgot that there was a recession Boost your profit margin by not paying for DRM inclusion.

[Jass]

They shouldn't be surprised that Need for Speed would sell poorly. If they at least put in some quality time into making the game unique, instead of releasing crap as fast as possible. I think the game just gets worse with every release.

[Turok]

...EA said it would now try to make additional cuts to its costs on top of those announced in October....

What?! They keep murdering games, yet they even refuse to lower prices in a time of crisis...
They probably are just going to lay off customer service workers to make things even worse
I hope this ends up backfiring them and they end up bankrupt. The world would be a better place without them

[Dami3n]

The last NFS is even worse than carbono+pro street, so they can´t expect great sales.
If they really want to make some money, they must do more games like dead space and less crap.

[Cold Fussion]

Good. If there is a god, EA will be going into chapter 7 very soon.

[Stukov]

Good. If there is a god, EA will be going into chapter 7 very soon.

Free the software industry!

[003]

Good. If there is a god, EA will be going into chapter 7 very soon.

Dead Space and Left4 Dead both own hard...

[ex2cib]

i think the last need for speed i really liked was most wanted.

they've all kinda sucked since then

[K404]

Im really trying to care about EAs position...but....I cant.




Ah well!

[naokaji]

Analysts said that some of EA's titles, such as Dead Space and Left 4 Dead, had been selling well,

???

Does EA get money from the steam version of L4D as well? or why would it sell well for them? It's made by Valve and sold by Valve on Steam, if the retail sales of any game are low, then surely the retail version of L4D would sell even worse? or is ea somehow including sales on steam as well?

[STEvil]

EA might be handling console versions of L4D? That's my only guess.

[TurboDiv]

They should start learning from GRID and stop selling the exact same garbage with different skins...

[eric66]

well nfs sucks what do you expect by the way now i understand why they did implement physx into mirrors edge lol

[Kuroimaho]

What did they expect ? They are trying to sell the same game for years.

[rob1101]

What?! They keep murdering games, yet they even refuse to lower prices in a time of crisis...
They probably are just going to lay off customer service workers to make things even worse
I hope this ends up backfiring them and they end up bankrupt. The world would be a better place without them

amen, it sucks that a lot of people will be out of work, but seriously EA needs to GTFO with the DRM and monopolizing the market destroying good titles.

[Hypediss]

Free the software industry!

QFT AMEN AMEN!!!

[nosboost300]

last i remember.. EA bought steam a while ago...

[Omastar]

Maybe they could try lowering prices.

BUT OMG GAME DEVELOPMENT IS SUPER EXPENSIVE. IT'S SO HARD TO MAKE THE SAME GAME OVER AND OVER.

[FischOderAal]

???

Does EA get money from the steam version of L4D as well? or why would it sell well for them? It's made by Valve and sold by Valve on Steam, if the retail sales of any game are low, then surely the retail version of L4D would sell even worse? or is ea somehow including sales on steam as well?

Iirc the retail-boxes of Half-Life were sold bei EA, but I don't have an EA-sticker on my L4D-box so I would say that STEvil might be right. I don't think EA is earning anything from the games that are sold within Steam.

[Iconyu]

last i remember.. EA bought steam a while ago...

Oh? I really think that would have made a bigger ripple than you think, like EA games being on Steam...

But if you're sure, then you'll be able to find a link.

[Jamesrt2004]

last i remember.. EA bought steam a while ago...

IIRC there was a rumour but nothing came of it

[RPGWiZaRD]

There's no EA logos anywhere on my L4D copy, only Valve, I bought from amazon.co.uk. So if they got something to do with it it's the console versions in that case.

[noinimod]

Am i the only one who thinks l4d isn't gonna sell as well on the 360 compared to the PC? I can understand how the controller could work in a Halo/Gears of War setting, but l4d is pretty fast paced and especially in versus mode, you're gonna need precision a controller cant offer.

[SADS]

Am i the only one who thinks l4d isn't gonna sell as well on the 360 compared to the PC? I can understand how the controller could work in a Halo/Gears of War setting, but l4d is pretty fast paced and especially in versus mode, you're gonna need precision a controller cant offer.

that's true.

however, i assume that Xbox players wont be playing against PC players so it could even out a little. otherwise the Xbox players would get massacred.

i almost hope that EA goes under. they make a lot of awful games, the amount of remakes/reskins of games that were good when they were origonal is insane. the sims, the C&C series, battlefield is starting to feel that way for me too.

the C&C series is the one that angers me the most, i've not even played red alert 3. i can imagine that it's still using the same engine that generals used, and thats almost 6 years old now. and i also imagine that it will still have the same dire net code/bugs and that silly 30fps cap.