EA may only do 30 games/year one day

By Tom Bramwell Published 2 December, 2009

Riccitiello also talks up digital growth.

John Riccitiello has said that he would not be surprised if EA started producing even fewer games in a year than the 40 or so it has planned for 2010.

"30 wouldn't shock me at some point in the future," Riccitiello told a Reuters Media Summit (thanks Kotaku).

The silver-haired fox wasn't just there to acknowledge that EA was shrinking, however - he was also speaking on the broader subject of digital games and their growing significance.

"It's our goal for that business to be as important as, and over time maybe more important than, our packaged goods business," he said.

EA has already made steps in this area, albeit with mixed success. Its early DLC offerings were criticised for perceived cynicism as people were invited to spend money to cheat their way to unlockables in games like Need for Speed.

Like many publishers, it has also had to tune its pricing to fit a market where the expectation gap between four and eight quid is vast - with FIFA 10: Ultimate Team's price point, half that of last year's version, perhaps a good example.

Elsewhere the company has developed its EA Downloader technology for direct sales of PC titles, and produced microtransaction-supported games like BattleForge and Battlefield Heroes, while its PSN and Xbox Live Arcade offerings show signs of improvement, with the likes of Battlefield 1943 generating a lot of interest and positive reviews.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (6) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • YourMessageHere #1 2 years ago

    Do fewer games. Make them better. This is correct. I just hope this includes annual sports game updates too.

    Given that a number of EA games are now on Steam, I thought they were giving up on their rubbish EA Downloader thing. I remember battling with that to get an addon for BF2, and re-evaluating how much I liked steam in light of seeing how utterly appalling the competition was.

  • tomjoadsghost #2 2 years ago

    Still works out as an EA classic every twelve days, or more likely one every two months and a couple of dozen between october and christmas.

  • r_simsini #3 2 years ago

    30 games eh? Let's see... FIFA 11, Tiger Woods 11, NHL 11, NBA Live 11, Nascar 11, Madden 11, NCAA Football 11, NCAA Basketball 11 etc...

    Does anyone see a pattern here?

  • bad09 #4 2 years ago

    Speaking of their DD, EA store has a deal on a different game every day through DEC. Yesterday Dead Space a fiver today Sims2 £15.

  • Bluetooth #5 2 years ago

    Back to 40 hour epic games I hope

  • hiddenranbir #6 2 years ago

    Why would EA give up their own store? Makes no sense.

    EAStore is pretty nice, got Mass Effect and Dragon Age from it.