Posted on Wednesday, February 13 2008 @ 3:00 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Kinda surprising but Electronic Arts' CEO John Riccitiello
admitted at DICE that his company has made a lot of mistakes in the past. Riccitiello says he regrets EA's mismanagement which struck down once great game developers such as Origin Systems, Westwood and Bullfrog:
Developers fallen victim to EA’s previous mismanagement include the once great Origin Systems, Westwood and Bullfrog. "When I talked to the creators that populated these companies at the time, they felt like they were buried and stifled," Riccitiello said.
EA Sports is notorious for making small changes, sometimes the most significant of which is a roster update, every year to its sports games and selling them for full price. While that model may work for a select genre, it’s largely inapplicable everywhere else. EA may have figured that purchasing a developer for solely the IP would be a winning idea, but one that is now proven to fail without the adequate inspiration behind it.
"The command and conquer model," said the EA CEO, "doesn't work. If you think you're going to buy a developer and put your name on the label... you're making a profound mistake."
Such was the topic of Riccitiello’s talk at the DICE conference, informing listeners that he would put forth a "new model" of "how publishers and developers can work together in the future," hoping to avoid the mistakes of EA past.
