EA: Quality Is Not The Entire Game Selling Equation

[Molondo]

Description
Speaking in an investor call, Electronic Arts CEO, John Riccitiello, discussed the company's lower than expected sales during 2008.

"While we saw significant improvement in the overall quality of our key products this year, that quality has not yet translated into enough sales," he said. "So far in calendar 08 we have shipped 17 titles with Metacritic scores of 80 or above versus seven this time last year. Quality is a prerequisite for a great selling game - but it is not the entire equation."

"We did manage to put quality and innovation on the board, and we're very proud of that. Many times, what happens with a new intellectual property is the first edition doesn't generate the units that subsequent editions can generate, and I would argue that in this particular year the consumer might have more reticent to take risk than they might otherwise be, in a very crowded Holiday."

"So I think we've established the value for EA, and the value in our franchises, and these are things we can build on in the future."

"We're very pleased with a lot of our new franchises this year," he added. "We think Spore has established a strong base for being an ongoing franchise, we think the same of MySims, Dead Space looks like a long term big winner for us. We expect Warhammer will continue to perform very, very well, it's life measured in multiples of years not multiples of months."

"Mirror's Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed. That one's going to go forward; we'll probably be looking at some issues around the design to make sure that a strong IP is married to a strong business."

To increase profitability, EA decided to cut down its games portfolio and lay off staff in 2009.

What do you suppose is the entire equation for better sales? I suppose better support afterwards with patches? Or maybe better thought out DRM?

I do agree that EA has upped their game a bit regarding quality. I haven't tried warhammer or spore, but i have played Dead space and Mirror's edge. Those games were much better than average and innovative and i enjoyed them.

 

[pontifex]

Are they talking warhammer online or just the warhammer franchise? WAR online doesn't seem to be doing very well from what I hear. I thought the Warhammer RTS games were published by THQ though?

apparently the other part of the equation is making a gazillion sequels, hence the frachise comments for all of the games they made.

 

[AstroManLuca]

It's true, though. Familiarity sells. When you're dropping $60 for a game, you want to know that you'll like it. So when they get a popular franchise, they're going to milk it for all it's worth. This can be a good or a bad thing. A good thing if the games are enjoyable and each one brings something new to the table, but a bad thing if they end up being all the same game (or worse, if each installment gets worse, like how Need For Speed has gone downhill since Most Wanted).

Mass-market appeal is big, obviously. Same with convenience of DRM, support, multiplayer quality and support, and so on.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: pontifex
Are they talking warhammer online or just the warhammer franchise? WAR online doesn't seem to be doing very well from what I hear. I thought the Warhammer RTS games were published by THQ though?

apparently the other part of the equation is making a gazillion sequels, hence the frachise comments for all of the games they made.

It sold at least a million copies after a few weeks, there was a blurb about it from EA/Mythic. It probably sold at least 1.5m total as it was on NPD's top 5 list for almost 2 months. If it can retain half of those subs going forward it will be considered incredibly successful in MMO terms and 2nd only to WoW.

As for the original article, I'd say a big part of the equation right now is the horrible global economy which is pummeling every industry.

 

[Xavier434]

Obviously quality alone is not the only important factor in this "equation". This is nothing new at all. That concept has applied to nearly every product since the history of our markets and probably even further back than that. What bothers me here is that while such an obvious concept is true, why is it that EA feels the need to really emphasize it? All that really says to me is that they are further willing to make sacrifices to quality as long as the dollars keep flowing. Typical EA thinking.

 

[lupi]

let's see, some of their games have gotten better but were released at the same time as similar games that were top or near top of the genre, several of their titles on the PC have suffered heavily from we made it original for consoltitis, and to top it off they have embraced the least fuk the consumer DRM strategy.

the first one is just bad luck, the second two are totally in EAs control and until they show a clear change of direction there why should we change our buying habits.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Molondo
I do agree thatEA has upped their game a bit regarding quality. I haven't tried warhammer or spore, but i have played Dead space and Mirror's edge. Those games were much better than average and innovative and i enjoyed them.

Yeah spore is amazingly fun to play.... if you want a simplified art program for kids with learning difficulties.

Red alert 3 was a resounding success as well, i like how theyve totally ruined the gameplay and just blatantly copied the story from red alert 2 (no joke) and shoehorned it into ra3.

Cant wait for next years lineup :roll:

I still say dead space was a total fluke and EA couldnt pull that off again, its a passable FPS game which is notable because EA never makes anything of decent quality.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

This is what you need to sell a game these days

Powered Suits (Big Burly Men Optional but preferable), Aliens, Plasma Rifles, Sword/Chainsaw, Bloom.

 

[lozina]

They measure their quality in Metacritic's score? There's the problem right there.

See, I've been noticing more and more a gap growing between the "professional" critics which the Metacritic score is based on and what actual players think. Of course, Metacritic also makes a user rating score available but it is not the number EA is talking about.

These critics are either becoming desensitized by the preponderance of utter crap games in the market or are becoming bedfellows with the major publishers.

Case in point: http://www.metacritic.com/game...forms/pc/spore?q=spore

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: lozina
They measure their quality in Metacritic's score? There's the problem right there.

See, I've been noticing more and more a gap growing between the "professional" critics which the Metacritic score is based on and what actual players think. Of course, Metacritic also makes a user rating score available but it is not the number EA is talking about.

These critics are either becoming desensitized by the preponderance of utter crap games in the market or are becoming bedfellows with the major publishers.

Case in point: http://www.metacritic.com/game...forms/pc/spore?q=spore

That stuck out to me too even though I did not mention it in my last post.

 

[BladeVenom]

Advertising to sell to the ignorant masses. Movie games usually sell well even though most are complete shit.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Maximilian

Originally posted by: Molondo
I do agree thatEA has upped their game a bit regarding quality. I haven't tried warhammer or spore, but i have played Dead space and Mirror's edge. Those games were much better than average and innovative and i enjoyed them.

Yeah spore is amazingly fun to play.... if you want a simplified art program for kids with learning difficulties.

Red alert 3 was a resounding success as well, i like how theyve totally ruined the gameplay and just blatantly copied the story from red alert 2 (no joke) and shoehorned it into ra3.

Cant wait for next years lineup :roll:

I still say dead space was a total fluke and EA couldnt pull that off again, its a passable FPS game which is notable because EA never makes anything of decent quality.

The funny thing is that Red Alert 2 wasn't very good. I bought it because I loved Command and Conquer and bought all C&C games, but I couldn't even get halfway through either campaign, because they were so boring. So if RA3 was just like RA2, then no wonder it did so poorly.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Maximilian

Originally posted by: Molondo
I do agree thatEA has upped their game a bit regarding quality. I haven't tried warhammer or spore, but i have played Dead space and Mirror's edge. Those games were much better than average and innovative and i enjoyed them.

Yeah spore is amazingly fun to play.... if you want a simplified art program for kids with learning difficulties.

Red alert 3 was a resounding success as well, i like how theyve totally ruined the gameplay and just blatantly copied the story from red alert 2 (no joke) and shoehorned it into ra3.

Cant wait for next years lineup :roll:

I still say dead space was a total fluke and EA couldnt pull that off again, its a passable FPS game which is notable because EA never makes anything of decent quality.

The funny thing is that Red Alert 2 wasn't very good. I bought it because I loved Command and Conquer and bought all C&C games, but I couldn't even get halfway through either campaign, because they were so boring. So if RA3 was just like RA2, then no wonder it did so poorly.

No RA3 isnt even a pale shadow of what RA2 was. It only copied the story, for the most part.

I liked RA2, although it did mess up the storyline from RA1 which i also liked. But at least RA2 had awesome gameplay.

 

[Emultra]

Good lord, do people have some sort of Script For Typing Like This, or are they just into self-flaggellation? I know it's a title/billboard thing in English but I wish people would just drop it. It looks stupid and can't be much fun typing out.

On-topic: third party economic interest and art/entertainment has always been a combination that creates a tug of war between quality and profits. That actually speaks more of the large throngs of people willing to buy crap as opposed to the few who want sophisticated games, than it does about publishers. The publishers are only doing what makes sense from their perspective. That certainly doesn't guarantee a 100% competency rate in their camp but the biggest of them do make bucks by the hundreds of millions.

Still, this industrialized, mass production approach to computer games doesn't appeal to me and other hardcore PC gamers. The people who would list Baldur's Gate 2, Deus Ex, Thief, X-Com etc. among the top games. Seems we're a shrinking crowd, especially compared to the newer market as a whole.

It's one thing that kitchen knives got this treatment, with their plastic handles, that's OK. But kitchen knives aren't my favorite medium, pasttime and general topic of interest.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: lozina
See, I've been noticing more and more a gap growing between the "professional" critics which the Metacritic score is based on and what actual players think. Of course, Metacritic also makes a user rating score available but it is not the number EA is talking about.


Case in point: http://www.metacritic.com/game...forms/pc/spore?q=spore

Actually, the problem is that Metacritic arbitrarily makes up numbers. They even state this in their description of how they come up with a score:
http://www.metacritic.com/about/scoring.shtml
"Our staffers will go through every publication on our Film Publications list (see below) looking for reviews for Iron Chef vs. Godzilla. For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.). These individual critic scores are then averaged together to come up with an overall score."

Let's look at a few of the professional reviews of Spore and see if the number assigned matches the description.

"Rather than match the freedom in the gameplay, however, Spore forces players to use their creations in a series of levels that are derivative and dull."
-Metacritic score of 50 (wtf?)

"Ultimately, as interesting as Spore?s concept is, the actual gameplay works against its offer to let you be creative, and the gameplay isn?t really worth the sacrifice of the creativity - especially when the standalone creature creator was released ages ago. For a fiver."
-Metacritic score of 60

"Spore is the most fantastic game you?ll ever avoid playing. I can easily guarantee you will find something upsetting about the end product; the game is riddled with flaws small and large, and though there is a lot of impressive tech backing the whole product, it does not have the kind of polish we so arrogantly expect from our entertainment."
-Metacritic score of 67

Those don't sound like 50-100 reviews. That first one basically says the game sucks, the second one says it's a ripoff, the third says it's broken.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

For computer games, a 50 does suck. Even below 70 is usually a very bad score for a review.

 

[JujuFish]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
For computer games, a 50 does suck. Even below 70 is usually a very bad score for a review.

Yeah. I take it like a score in school. Below 65 = Fail.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: JujuFish

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
For computer games, a 50 does suck. Even below 70 is usually a very bad score for a review.

Yeah. I take it like a score in school. Below 65 = Fail.

Most schools I've ever heard of set the bar at 50%.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: JujuFish

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
For computer games, a 50 does suck. Even below 70 is usually a very bad score for a review.

Yeah. I take it like a score in school. Below 65 = Fail.

Most schools I've ever heard of set the bar at 50%.

In my public school, below 65=fail..

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
For computer games, a 50 does suck. Even below 70 is usually a very bad score for a review.

70 is usually worth buying for a fan of the genre, but its rating is often held back because of bugs or other problems.

Did anyone really expect EA to publicly state that quality was their goal, with the crap they produce and the DRM crap they force on paying customers?

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Did anyone really expect EA to publicly state that quality was their goal, with the crap they produce and the DRM crap they force on paying customers?

It would make sense. They actually believe that making annoying DRM discourages piracy; their logic is that messed up.

I'm not trying to start a big DRM argument, so I'll just state that theirs is the only DRM that really annoys me. Lots of people are bitching about GTA 4 securom, but I've never had any issues with it. Games like Spore and RA3 go ten steps beyond GTA 4's protection, and it makes the game worthless, but EA will swear up and down that it doesn't.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: lozina
See, I've been noticing more and more a gap growing between the "professional" critics which the Metacritic score is based on and what actual players think. Of course, Metacritic also makes a user rating score available but it is not the number EA is talking about.


Case in point: http://www.metacritic.com/game...forms/pc/spore?q=spore

Actually, the problem is that Metacritic arbitrarily makes up numbers. They even state this in their description of how they come up with a score:
http://www.metacritic.com/about/scoring.shtml
"Our staffers will go through every publication on our Film Publications list (see below) looking for reviews for Iron Chef vs. Godzilla. For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.). These individual critic scores are then averaged together to come up with an overall score."

Let's look at a few of the professional reviews of Spore and see if the number assigned matches the description.

"Rather than match the freedom in the gameplay, however, Spore forces players to use their creations in a series of levels that are derivative and dull."
-Metacritic score of 50 (wtf?)

"Ultimately, as interesting as Spore?s concept is, the actual gameplay works against its offer to let you be creative, and the gameplay isn?t really worth the sacrifice of the creativity - especially when the standalone creature creator was released ages ago. For a fiver."
-Metacritic score of 60

"Spore is the most fantastic game you?ll ever avoid playing. I can easily guarantee you will find something upsetting about the end product; the game is riddled with flaws small and large, and though there is a lot of impressive tech backing the whole product, it does not have the kind of polish we so arrogantly expect from our entertainment."
-Metacritic score of 67

Those don't sound like 50-100 reviews. That first one basically says the game sucks, the second one says it's a ripoff, the third says it's broken.

Yeah, reviewers are all sellout assholes imo, they used to review games to tell us how good the game was now they do it because EA told them to. Also most reviews for spore are 80+ anyway so even if metecritic did put those clearly negative reviews in the 60's it wouldnt matter much. The user score on metacritic tells the truth usually.

I dont see any way in hell those comments correlate with the scores given, i dont trust any reviewer anymore. Zero punctuation is usually on the mark with things i dislike about games but really i just try the game before i buy it these days, makes for a less painful less omg i got screwed buying this game experience. Either that or get opinions on anandtech or another forum, bought CoD: UO recently based on good opinions of it here, same with fallout 3 for xbox.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Emultra
Good lord, do people have some sort of Script For Typing Like This, or are they just into self-flaggellation? I know it's a title/billboard thing in English but I wish people would just drop it. It looks stupid and can't be much fun typing out.

On-topic: third party economic interest and art/entertainment has always been a combination that creates a tug of war between quality and profits. That actually speaks more of the large throngs of people willing to buy crap as opposed to the few who want sophisticated games, than it does about publishers. The publishers are only doing what makes sense from their perspective. That certainly doesn't guarantee a 100% competency rate in their camp but the biggest of them do make bucks by the hundreds of millions.

Still, this industrialized, mass production approach to computer games doesn't appeal to me and other hardcore PC gamers. The people who would list Baldur's Gate 2, Deus Ex, Thief, X-Com etc. among the top games. Seems we're a shrinking crowd, especially compared to the newer market as a whole.

It's one thing that kitchen knives got this treatment, with their plastic handles, that's OK. But kitchen knives aren't my favorite medium, pasttime and general topic of interest.

Like everything else, there will be quality publishers, and publishers that are after the bigger "buy the cheapest thing that works" market. The quality people have their niche, and they will sell to that niche. As long as they don't overextend themselves, they should be able to maintain that - because there are always peole who will pay a little bit more for something that they know will just work, and won't give them problems down the road.

On that vain, I have a set of knives from Chicago Cutlery that are better than the high quality knives my parents had when I was a kid. My sister has an even better set of knives from them that I bought her for her wedding. So even with knives, you can still buy quality - you just have to know where to look.

 

[PingSpike]

The fact that they actually did bad enough on the "paid shill-o-meter" to drop below 80 is telling. You take a dump in a DVD box and it'll get a 65%.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: pontifex
Are they talking warhammer online or just the warhammer franchise? WAR online doesn't seem to be doing very well from what I hear. I thought the Warhammer RTS games were published by THQ though?

apparently the other part of the equation is making a gazillion sequels, hence the frachise comments for all of the games they made.

When you get $15 a month for the privilege of playing it doesn't take a ton of customers to make a game successful. If you get over the initial development cost "hump" that subscription fee starts having a HUGE profit margin.

I found this in relation to WoW's costs:

The game maker said it has spent only $200m (~ £110.24m) on upkeep since the game launched in 2004.

That $200m figure apparently includes payroll for the entire staff, hardware support, and customer service. The news comes care of gaming blog Kotaku

While Blizzard doesn't say exactly how much it makes off WoW, let's try to put that into some perspective.

Blizzard estimates the game has over 10 million subscribers worldwide. Rates depend on the region, and things like free guest passes and discounts make things tricky. But let's use a conservative three quarters of that figure to play around with - 7,500,000 users paying month-to-month - and let's say their monthly subscription rate is $15 (the US rate).

That would mean the company is pulling in a total $112.5m every month. That's $1.35bn (~ £743.5m) per year in revenue from subscription fees alone.

Not bad for a four-year investment of only $200m.

so WoW has 50mil a year in server & staffing costs. We can probably assume that WAR is significantly smaller at this point, but probably has a little higher average based on size due to just starting up. Figure around 25 mil a year, which is ~2 months of subscriptions from 1 million subscribers. If development costs are 50 mil (seems high, but maybe), that's ~4 months. Figure in some profit from box sales, and WAR has come pretty close to paying for that now through box sales and their first few months of subscriptions.

This means that WAR is at, or quickly approaching, the phase where they're pure gravy. something like 6-8 months of subs that are pure profit. If they maintain 1 million subs, that's on the order of 80-100 mil profit in the first year? That has to be considered a huge success. Even if the game starts petering out, it's still going to be considered highly successful from a business standpoint.

Once you get over the initial development hump, the MMO model is quite profitable even if the game drops down to a very small number of subscribers.