Riccitiello: EA quality up "sharply"

By Robert Purchese Published 28 July, 2008

"We've turned the corner on that issue."

John Riccitiello believes the fruits of his reappointment as EA boss are beginning to show and has noted a "sharp" rise in the quality of the publisher's games.

"A lot of people in our industry get stuck thinking that their job is to manage a lot of business process, and somehow the games happen down in the trenches. I'm trying to actually get it shifted, so people understand that the most important thing in our company is where the programming, the art direction, the game design and production takes place," Riccitiello told the Mercury News.

"Ultimately, if we do that, we'll make the best games. If we make the best games, they'll sell really well, and we'll be really profitable.

"Our game quality and level of innovation is up sharply when you look at recently released titles and then you look at what's on the roadmap. We've turned the corner on that issue, and I'm very proud of that," he said.

Riccitiello, looking back, feels he made the "wrong call" by presuming Xbox 360 and PS3 would be market leaders before the current generation got into gear. But he is confident the "increased emphasis" on Wii and DS development will pay off this year and in 2009.

However, the Xbox 360 and PS3 will not be forgotten, as Riccitiello points to an unusually "meaningful" battle for second and third place between the two consoles.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (36) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • Eraysor #1 4 years ago

    I will eat my own head if the next Need For Speed game has sharply increased quality.

  • penhalion #2 4 years ago

    I think the gamers will be the judges of whether EA have turned the quality corner and not some no game playing company boss.

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    "Ultimately, if we do that, we'll make the best games. If we make the best games, they'll sell really well, and we'll be really profitable."

    Sadly this isn't always true as there's been lots of games that have been great over the years that have been cruelly ignored because people just didn't want to play them. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a good example and that was published by EA. Conversely publishers can churn out awful games made on the cheap and sell loads of copies, especially if they're licensed titles. It seems sometimes that there's no real logic to which games do well and which shouldn't, it's probably the reason there's so little real innovation as publishers are afraid of spending millions on the next big flop.

  • Dynamize #4 4 years ago

    All these years, just to go back to the start and copy Trip Hawkins' original ideas about how Electronic Arts should pursue business.

  • Darren #5 4 years ago

    I'd like to add that I think that EA's big problem is that they put too much focus on their yearly updates such as their EA Sports range. These games tend to have short development cycles because they're annual so features are half finished/rushed or even missing entirely as was the case with many early Xbox 360 games from them. Over the period of a console's lifespan, these games gradually build up to something decent, e.g. FIFA 08 but with more time maybe that standard could be achieved earlier?

    I'd like to see EA release their sports games bi-annually to give them a longer development cycle and they could sell online updates at a small price inbetween to bring the games' stats up to date. Given that most of these games tend to virtually indistinguishable from the previous year's version bar some gimmicky new feature, it would seem to make sense. Of course, these games do sell and EA don't strike me as a company that puts quality before profit particularly.

  • peterfll #6 4 years ago

    I also wait to see if any 3rd party really turns the corner with the Wii and gives us more than luke-warm PS2/GC rehashes with bolted on Wiimote controls.

  • Darren #7 4 years ago

    I was under the impression that EA are one of the few third-party publishers that are genuinely making an effort with their Wii games. I don't know myself as I prefer to buy their games, especially the sports ones, on the PS3 or Xbox 360.

  • bad09 #8 4 years ago

    My last EA game was Army Of Two so I think they have long way to go :)

    Dead Space is looking good though so there may be light at the end of the tunnel

  • vapour #9 4 years ago

    Can he shut the fuck up now? He hasn't stopped his jibber jabber since E3 and i'm getting bored of his daily musings on things that no-one gives a fuck about.

  • johnnybrn #10 4 years ago

    Um, I quite enjoyed AOT and am looking forward to Army Of Two Two.

    Thought it was a step in the right direction

  • seasidebaz #11 4 years ago

    I want my new Need For Speed to be better than the original and Hot Pursuit 2.

    Then I know they are back in business ;)

  • Lebowski #12 4 years ago

    "Army of Two Two"

    I don't know whether to go for a joke about Desmond, dancewear, or "just-about-did-okay" university graduates here.

  • bad09 #13 4 years ago

    Army of two two did make me imagine ballet dancers kicking ass with guns! :)

  • the_dudefather #14 4 years ago

    I'm inclined to agree, aside from the yearly update games (sports+NFS), EA titles tend to be decent

    part of me still dislikes the lack of bullfrog titles in the last ten years, but they are going in the right direction

  • convercide #15 4 years ago

    The quality is up sharply?

    How about this or this?

  • Feanor #16 4 years ago

    He's using the American definition of "quality".

  • Farfarer #17 4 years ago

    Uh... let's let the gaming public discern that, shall we, Riccitello?

    Keep more original stuff like Dead Space and Skate coming out (and I mean new IPs, not sequel to those) and then you can start to say that.

  • Lexx87 #18 4 years ago

    I still hate EA after they ruined Dungeon Keeper the cunts

  • MyPointIs #19 4 years ago

    And there you've got the problem; He sees quality as an 'issue' he can get fixed by just saying so.

  • Muneeb #20 4 years ago

    As said already a good new Need For Speed would be nice. =)

  • Royal Fool #21 4 years ago

    "We've been trying to fix the quality problem by buying up several development studios.

    So far it hasn't had much effect, so I guess that means we'll have to buy a few more."

  • _Price_ #22 4 years ago

    As much as I enjoy heckling EA from afar they have improved markedly during the last few years. They've got a way to go, but if they keep up their current trend then corner has been turned, albeit in 4th gear.

  • gaselite #23 4 years ago

    I completely agree, and this is from someone who thought the overall output of EA, as a publisher and developer, was generally never that bad to begin with. Good on them.
    Edited by 1 at 28/07/08 @ 21:35

  • Nige #24 4 years ago

    "Game quality is up" says former ice cream and cake salesman who never played a game in his life, and couldn't spot a decent one if it took a lash in his fridge.

    Go away feckless executive. Any half-wit who read a Eurogamer comments forum could have pointed out EA's shortcomings. It's cnuts like you and Probst who parked it in the crapper in the first place.

  • bonker #25 4 years ago

    "However, the Xbox 360 and PS3 will not be forgotten, as Riccitiello points to an unusually "meaningful" battle for second and third place between the two consoles."

    Right, unusually meaningful in that this gen's 'leader' has an average game spend per-console of £2.50pa whereas it's more like £250pa for the 360 and I dare say that even the PS3 will be into triple digits soon ...

  • el_pollo_diablo #26 4 years ago

    Only took them 20 years.

    We should all remember that back when EA was called Electronic arts, they really did bring out some fantastic games.

  • autogunner #27 4 years ago

    heres a tip for a huge blockbuster that will sell millions EA : SSX4 (a sequel of SSX3) i would buy ten of them

  • timberwolf #28 4 years ago

    or in other words... recently we bought out pandemic and bioware... and yes we do take the credit for bioshock even though we had nothing to do with it.

  • zzyzx #29 4 years ago

    @Darren:

    If EA is making a real effort on the Wii, then the titles that reflect those efforts have not yet been released. That doesn't mean that they don't exist; the new Tiger game might be great. The new Madden football game might be great. The new FIFA might be almost as good as Pro Evo 08 Wii.

    But to date their products have been fair to poor. What's funny about the timing of this story is that EA's most recent release (in the US, at least) was NCAA Football 2009. Go to some of the US gaming sites, and you'll find that its reviews are absolutely brutal. IMO, 2K publishes the best sports titles on the Wii (MLB Power Pros; MLB2k8; Top Spin 3; NHL2k9 in a few weeks), arguably followed by Konami (on the strength of Pro Evo alone). EA might be turning the corner, but let's not congratulate them just yet.

    FWIW, I think you're 100% correct about moving sports releases to every 2 years. And they could still gain revenue on the off-years by selling an interim roster update.
    Edited by 1 at 29/07/08 @ 01:18

  • Hugh.G.Rection #30 4 years ago

    In other words: "EA boss publicly lies about quality of titles in order to keep lining pockets"

    zzyzx - 2K make some of the best sports games fullstop, and have been comfortably ahead with NHL, NFL and NBA for a number of years in my opinion. Sony are improving (MLB08: The Show) and if Konami kick it back into top gear with Pro Evo development then EA have nothing. They are rueing the day the world woke up to better quality titles about 4 years ago and are steadily losing grip on the sports genres they once ruled with an iron fist. The 2K5 ESPN range was so much better than EA's feeble attempts that they couldn't comprehend competing technically and so bought the ESPN licence exclusively at a price 2K couldn't match. Ditto the NFL and FIFA player licences. I applaude games like Pro Evo and Everybody's Golf that have competed and bettered EA's releases through skill and hard work rather than deep pockets and annual gimmicks.

    Is it just me or does EA seem to 'own' analogue stick controls? I mean if Neversoft hadn't of done an EA Sports and released cash-in after cash-in and incorporated it first, would Skate have been seen as the title it is? Every year EA Sports thinks of some new stupid, imprecise way of doing something with them that I'm scared about Skate 2. Gimmicky control schemes for all platforms does not equal an upturn in quality for me.

    The 'original' or 'improved quality' games coming out of EA (Spore, Dead Space, Mercenaries 2, Bad Company) are all developed by new divisions of EA that they have aquired (with said deep pockets) trying to gain a market share of genres they have yet to dominate or are being developed by other companies entirely.

    Don't worry Riccitiello, I'm sure if you keep buying quality independent developers and grinding them into the ground (Origin, Westwood) you'll eventually own everything and the quality you output won't matter because we won't have an alternative.

    /rant over.

  • Darren #31 4 years ago

    @zzyzx - I did mention the quality of EA's sports games earlier... remember how rushed their 360 games were for the first two years? The trouble with EA is that feel they need to release annual updates for them and they like to include new features (so it looks impressive on the back of the box) but their development cycles aren't long enough so the games get shipped with irritating bugs. It's only in the later yea's of a console's life that the games actually become really decent as the devs have build up a solid engine and spent the time refining and tweaking the features. It's telling that FIFA 07 on the original Xbox was the best version by far, coming at the end of that console's life, and after some FIVE releases (at least) in less than three years, UEFA Euro 2008 is considered the best version of the FIFA engine on the PS3 and 360. I've no doubt FIFA 09 will be better still but it won't be ground-breaking and it'll contain lots of glitches and bugs, such is the way with EA games. It'll also have an appallingly written cheaply produced wafer-thin black and white manual. ;)

    As for 2K, I think they're even lazier than EA when it comes to their NHL and NBA 2K series as the games have barely changed over the last three years and that's the reason I didn't buy either of those games last year. They also have some of the most appalling and annoying to use menu interfaces I've ever come across in games.

  • scarabium #32 4 years ago

    Quality like Boogie on the Wii you mean?

  • the_mtfr #33 4 years ago

    I hate their guts for killing Bullfrog, the greatest game company. That crime will never be forgotten. And then there's Westwood, Origin Systems etc.

  • scarabium #34 4 years ago

    EA needs to look back at its old franchises and bring back the classics: Magic Carpet, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Flood, Powermonger, Gene Wars (who remembers that?), a decent Wing Commander, The Immortal, the list goes on. Magic Carpet, Syndicate and Powermonger on the DS would be instant purchases.

    The EA Download service also needs to be canned as its frightfully dreadful!

    However, while EA continues to churn out annually repetitive rubbish like FIFA 3045 and John Madden 10,000BC they will always get stick. Riccitiello needs to start ensuring the games designers are the most important part of the company - and not the bean counters. Still we all know how EA views its programmers, a la the EA Spouse scandal.

    I'd get Peter Molyneux to run EA. We might finally get Dungeon Keeper 3 then. Just don't ask when :p

  • subtlesnake #35 4 years ago

    "The 'original' or 'improved quality' games coming out of EA (Spore, Dead Space, Mercenaries 2, Bad Company) are all developed by new divisions of EA that they have aquired (with said deep pockets) trying to gain a market share of genres they have yet to dominate or are being developed by other companies entirely.

    Don't worry Riccitiello, I'm sure if you keep buying quality independent developers and grinding them into the ground (Origin, Westwood) you'll eventually own everything and the quality you output won't matter because we won't have an alternative. "


    Spore is being developed by Maxis, who've been part of EA since 1997, and are responsible for making the first 2 Sims games. So 10 years after joining EA, and after creating EA's biggest hit, Maxis are back with some of their most original and innovative work yet! Yes, that really speaks to how EA grinds its developers into the ground, doesn't it?

    Equally Dead Space is being developed at the EA HQ in Redwood Shores (which has almost exclusively worked on licensed projects in the past) not by some newly acquired developer. Furthermore, Dead Space was conceived not by EA execs as part of some cynical attempt to 'cash in' on an existing genre, but by a member of their development team, Glen Schofield, who pitched the idea for prototyping. And EA funded 18 - 25 developers for a year, just to create a 15 minute demo.

    [link url=http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story =18812
    ]http://ww w.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...[/link]

    Now the other games you list are from 'external' studios, but the point is that you can't accuse EA of relying on acquired developers for their critical and commercial success and then claim that at same time EA's developer relations are the problem! If EA treats their developers well, as they have done in recent times, and as a result quality improves (as it seems to have), then they deserve credit for that.

    In particular, they deserve credit for their new 'City state' model, where internal EA developers can prototype their own projects outside of EA's influence, a model which was necessary for the creation of Mirror's Edge - now one of EA's most anticipated titles:

    "I'd imagine many people think that working for a big games company like EA is quite 'corporate', with lots of meddling from executives and constant financial update meetings. This couldn't be further from the truth. Battlefield Heroes wasn't really on the radar of anyone outside of the DICE studio until we had spent six months in development -- more than half of our overall development time.

    Recently EA appointed a new CEO, John Riccitiello -- one of the changes John has implemented is the division of the EA studios into 'labels', covering specific types of games. The four labels are Casual, Sports, Sims and Games. DICE is part of the Games label, which includes shooters, driving games, RPGs, RTSs and action/adventure. This new label structure gives each individual studio lots of freedom to make the games it wants to make -- the games it believes will be exciting and successful, rather than taking direct orders from 'on high' on what to do. DICE recently announced Battlefield Heroes and Mirror's Edge, two games which are direct results of this new 'City State' model of studio management -- games created independently with very little influence from anyone outside the studio."

    [link url=http://www.battlefield-heroes.com/dev-blog/its-in-the- name
    ]http://ww w.battlefield-heroes.com/dev-bl...[/link]

    If you want criticise EA, criticise them for what they're doing now, not for what they did 5 or 10 years ago, that they have since moved on from (Riccitiello admits that they "blew it" with Bullfrog and Westwood http://ww w.bit-tech.net/news/2008/02/11/... )
    Edited by 1 at 29/07/08 @ 17:07

  • ChuckNorris #36 3 years ago

    @ Subtlesnake

    Thank you