donbot

I've played Far Cry 3 and all three of the Mass Effect games (still pissed off at the ending of III).

DMC looks like an interesting suggestion.

Me neither really.. he isn't really the most quotable figure though. He's more about the name. And the beard. And the facts.

He's from the south, but he's not exactly a hillbilly sort.. I wouldn't have picked him as one of the inspirations for that guy, but I might be wrong. Isn't that '..real pretty mouth' line from Deliverance?

I never saw it. Maybe? I think Chuck Norris is a hick that knows karate...:-) You know, that giant roundhouse kick he's fond of using.....!

No, not interchangeable.. but certainly more accessible. 'Serious' gamers are still playing on PC/consoles, but it's no doubt expanded the casual gamer market massively. Every man and his dog has a smartphone these days, and especially in an age where touchscreen interfaces are somewhat novel, it's not really surprising that games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja became huge hits.

To my understanding, many these games and apps (outside of Zynga, etc) are made by sole individuals or startups and relatively little revenue flows back to the vast majority of them. There are a few hits, of course, but it's almost arbitrary. The distribution nodes closest to the end user gets a bigger cut. It seems like a 'reflex' buy from a tablet or mobile user. And the traditional videogame industry is shrinking (I'm thinking mostly due to piracy).

In the industry, I'm not really sure.. but amongst gamers I'd say Take-Two by far is the most respected. Blizzard too, if you can separate them out (since they're largely seen as developers rather than publishers). Activision and EA are generally considered the biggest asshats in the industry. Take-Two you never really hear that much about, and you get the impression that they give their developers like 2k and Rockstar a lot of creative freedom in their endeavours, whereas Activision and EA meddle. You can see their greasy fingerprints all over the games they publish, and there's not really anything subtle about the way they go about their moneygrabbing. Probably why they're #1 and #2 though

If you look past the stock price, none of these companies are doing well financially. I scanned a research report for EA and they have no earnings for most of the past five years. It's an S&P 500 sized company that's on the decline.

How do these three companies make money besides retail distribution channels (from your experience?) I only know that the Blizzard multiplayer games are insanely addictive and people have to pay subscription fees. What else collects fees?

Personally, I respect the Rockstar (GTA, Red Dead) and Blizzard. (Starcraft). I recognize one game from 2K (bioshock) The quality is higher.

I know what you mean about the design approaches within sci-fi. I always think of that I, Robot movie (holy crap.. how is that film nearly 10 years old? ) as the epitome of that kind of streamlined vision of the future. I've never really thought of Mass Effect to be like that though - a lot of it has quite a throwback/boxy design to it.

To my understanding, many these games and apps (outside of Zynga, etc) are made by sole individuals or startups and relatively little revenue flows back to the vast majority of them. There are a few hits, of course, but it's almost arbitrary. The distribution nodes closest to the end user gets a bigger cut. It seems like a 'reflex' buy from a tablet or mobile user. And the traditional videogame industry is shrinking (I'm thinking mostly due to piracy).

If you look past the stock price, none of these companies are doing well financially. I scanned a research report for EA and they have no earnings for most of the past five years. It's an S&P 500 sized company that's on the decline.

^Actually it looks exactly like my '80s Bigtrak toy - I claim plagiarism!

I've played Far Cry 3 and all three of the Mass Effect games (still pissed off at the ending of III).

DMC looks like an interesting suggestion.

I played through the Citadel DLC for ME3 on the weekend. Definately worth picking up if you like the series and the characters - it's a great bit of fan service

Does it provide more closure?

This morning's WSJ article about the CEO stepping down. Includes a brief summary of the company's recent problems. Also, the stock is getting hammered right now.:

The mention of the 'Star Wars' franchise makes me think of Ophelia and how she used to post about it. Apparently, it was EA's unsuccessful attempt to enter Blizzard's multiplayer market.

The departing CEO's claim that he is '100% accountable' (It's all my fault!) is a way of deflecting criticism from his successor's future activities. Dead men can't talk.

Electronic Arts CEO Steps Down.

EA -8.55% Electronic Arts Inc.'s EA -8.55% chief executive, John Riccitiello, resigned after his efforts to respond to changes in the videogame industry failed to boost the company's earnings or stock.

The videogame publisher on Monday said Chairman Larry Probst, a previous EA chief executive, would become executive chairman and lead the company while the board searches for a permanent replacement for Mr. Riccitiello. EA also said it expects revenue and earnings per share for the current quarter could miss its guidance.

REUTERS

John Riccitiello at an EA press conference in Los Angeles in June 2012.

Mr. Probst, in prepared remarks, said the board and Mr. Riccitiello "mutually agreed" that the time was right for a leadership transition.

In a letter to employees, Mr. Riccitiello said he was taking responsibility for what he called "shortcomings" in the company's results this year. "It currently looks like we will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance we issued to the Street, and we have fallen short of the internal operating plan we set one year ago," he said in his letter. "For that, I am 100% accountable."

EA's shares have fallen nearly two-thirds since Mr. Riccitiello was named chief executive in 2007. Investors appeared to approve of the change, sending the company's stock up 3.2% to $19.30 in after-hours trading.

The move caps a tumultuous six years for the Redwood City, Calif., company. EA has struggled with pressures that include a shift in game play to the Web and a slide in demand for games played on videogame consoles, a mainstay of its business.

Mr. Riccitiello spent much of his tenure dealing with the online threat, which disrupted the company's longtime business model. EA spent decades selling game software on discs, with console titles like its "Madden" football franchise frequently carrying list prices of about $60.

But companies like Zynga Inc. ZNGA -1.99% changed the landscape by offering simple games that people could play on the Web free. It was a threat that Mr. Riccitiello identified as early as August 2007, just after he became CEO, when he gathered EA executives in a Manhattan ballroom for what became known as his "burning platform" speech.

In an interview in late 2011, he recalled comparing the company to a floating structure that would sink if it didn't extinguish the flames engulfing it—flames represented by the rise of online games and the waning business of selling games on discs.

EA in the ensuing years moved to emulate many of Zynga's tactics, though that company would later suffer its own problems. But Mr. Riccitiello didn't move as fast as some of its employees wanted; around 100 employees wound up leaving for Zynga, including top executives like Steve Chiang, who oversaw the Madden football franchise, and Barry Cottle, who was in charge of EA's social-gaming division.

In shifting its strategy, Mr. Riccitiello moved to whittle the number of games it makes for videogame consoles while investing heavily in making and distributing games for PCs, social networks and mobile devices.

Some signs have been encouraging. EA is one of the top game makers on Apple Inc.'s AAPL -0.69% App Store for the iPhone and iPad, and the amount of money it makes by selling content such as games, extra levels and other items over the Internet has continued to grow.

The company has struggled as of late, however. It reduced efforts to make games for Facebook Inc.'s FB +0.14% social games platform and saw weaker-than-expected sales for a recent war-simulation shooting game, "Medal of Honor: Warfighter."

In the company's fiscal second quarter, ended Dec. 31, those items represented about $321 million in sales, up 17% from $274 million a year prior.

More dramatic, however, has been the challenges it faced with its online game, "Star Wars: The Old Republic." The game, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make over the period of five years, was built to be a competitor to Activision Blizzard Inc.'s ATVI -2.23% popular "World of Warcraft" online subscription game. Activision has said that game, along with its "Call of Duty" war-simulation game series and its "Skylanders" toy game franchise, make up a significant portion of the company's revenue and profit.

But "Star Wars" didn't capture gamers fast enough. EA executives had said it needed 500,000 subscribers to be profitable and one million to make it a "good investment." The game attracted 1.7 million active players in its first month, but saw subscriber numbers shrink as months went on. EA stopped reporting the number of subscribers the game had and changed it from requiring a subscription to offering it as a "free-to-play" title, charging customers for items such as vehicles, boots and armor within the game.

EA has spent heavily to remake its strategy. It paid at least $275 million to acquire PlayFish Ltd., a London-based maker of online social games. It also paid as much as $1.3 billion to buy PopCap Games Inc., an eleven-year old Seattle-based company that produced a string of hit games, including "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies," which were particularly popular on mobile devices.

Mr. Probst served as chief executive of EA from 1991 until April of 2007, when Mr. Riccitiello took over. He has worked at EA in various roles, including as a senior vice president in charge of distribution, from 1984 until 2008. He served as the company's chairman of the board while also serving other functions outside EA, such as chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

In a statement, Mr. Probst said that Mr. Riccitiello's tenure at the company has been marked by "bold decisions, a big vision for online games, a passion for product quality and an enduring respect for the people who work here."

He added that he believed the company's strategy and future were "rock solid." But results in the most recent quarter were disappointing, however. Revenue declined 13%, though the company reported a narrower loss.

EA said Monday that its per-share earnings and revenue for the current quarter will be at the low end of, or slightly below, its January forecast of per-share earnings between 57 cents and 72 cents and revenue of $1.03 billion to $1.13 billion.

Mr. Riccitiello appears to be in line for an exit package valued at roughly $4.7 million, according to an EA securities filing. That includes two years of his salary and continued vesting of his restricted stock and stock options through June 2014. The value of the exit package could rise sharply if EA stock recovers, because Mr. Riccitiello holds roughly 1 million shares of restricted stock, many of which are tied to the performance of EA's stock compared with other big tech companies.

—Debbie Cai, Stu Woo and Scott Thurm contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Sherr at ian.sherr@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared March 19, 2013, on page B3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Electronic Arts CEO Steps Down.

I played through the Citadel DLC for ME3 on the weekend. Definately worth picking up if you like the series and the characters - it's a great bit of fan service

Does it provide more closure?

The mention of the 'Star Wars' franchise makes me think of Ophelia and how she used to post about it. Apparently, it was EA's unsuccessful attempt to enter Blizzard's multiplayer market.

None of the three majors are particularly big companies for industry leaders. Gaming is not a big industry.

Yeah, I don't really know. Apple (et al) no doubt take their slice, but on top of that ts it becomes one of the few breakout hits.

Never seen that show. There is a ridiculous number of sitcoms that get churned out all the time. Most of them are 'okay', and some are plain awful. There's only a really small percentage that are truly 'great'.. and I just can't be bothered with them unless they fall into that 'great' category

Oh, and great pics donny

I have steam- recently deleted it, though- but I haven't tinkered with it enough to know what it does outside of peddle product and deliver downloadables.

Oh, and great pics donny

I know Valve from the excellent 'Half Life' from 15+ years ago. You realize that Value has a staff of only 400 while EA has over 9,200 people? Superficially judging: It's a middle market, privately operated company so at the very basic level it doesn't have to focus so much on 3- month planning and result intervals like EA or B/A. It can be assumed that the business has a longer term emphasis.

I looked at its products and it's clear to me that this is a very concentrated (rather than diversified ) business. They are putting a lot of their eggs in a basket and relying on a small number of hits for income. This, along with its small size, should give it more emphasis on producing quality material.

EA appears to be the opposite- producing a lot of titles (rapidly) in different areas of interest but most of these have indifferent quality.

It's still essentially that at its core, along with being the platform that you also launch your games through. There's a lot of extra community stuff, which has grown and expanded over the past few years. So you have 'friends' lists, where you can text/voice chat, join games, compare achievements, all that stuff. Then there's larger 'community hub' areas, both generally and specific for games, where there are integrated forums, and places where everyone can share screenshots, videos, guides/walkthroughs, fanart, etc. Steam Workshop is another thing, where you can share, download and discuss mods and other items/addons for your games. Then there's Steam Greenlight, where developers can submit their finished or in-development games, and the community can discuss and vote on them - the successful ones are eventually released on the Steam store. They've also just launched this 'Early Access' feature as well, which is a platform for alpha/beta testing, and offers a more integrated way for the developers and gamers to interact during the process.

Valve is a very progressive company, and Steam is their baby. They're pretty much revered by the majority of PC gamers

^

Are these features used a lot by customers or are they mostly ignored?

Also, I saw you update your bioshock thread and I plan on catching the sequel on youtube.

I quite like that one A LOT as well

I know Valve from the excellent 'Half Life' from 15+ years ago. You realize that Value has a staff of only 400 while EA has over 9,200 people? Superficially judging: It's a middle market, privately operated company so at the very basic level it doesn't have to focus so much on 3- month planning and result intervals like EA or B/A. It can be assumed that the business has a longer term emphasis.

I looked at its products and it's clear to me that this is a very concentrated (rather than diversified ) business. They are putting a lot of their eggs in a basket and relying on a small number of hits for income. This, along with its small size, should give it more emphasis on producing quality material.

EA appears to be the opposite- producing a lot of titles (rapidly) in different areas of interest but most of these have indifferent quality.

Oh sure, they're very different companies.

Valve even have some hardware projects going on - last year there were talks of a 'Steam Box' they were working on (they're not the only ones working on such a thing either), which is something of a PC/console hybrid. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out and sits within the market.

^

Are these features used a lot by customers or are they mostly ignored?

Also, I saw you update your bioshock thread and I plan on catching the sequel on youtube.

Not everyone uses everything, but pretty much everything is used by someone

Pretty much everyone who plays PC games has Steam, so the user base is enormous.