March has seen EA take first place in sales and revenue, thanks to the success of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (developed by DICE). It seems it sold well because apparently Modern Warfare 2 wasn’t enough to satisfy the First-Person Shooter bloodlust you lot crave. If you’re one of those who loves the sound of impressive percentages, then check the story here - http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38585/EA-and-Battlefield-dominate-March. But there are two things you need to know; 1) No matter how much we say EA have lost their creative soul, they will continue to be a dominant force in the industry, so let’s move on and find some other scapegoat and 2) EA will be using this as either an “up yours” or “your move now” kind of message to Activision.
EA is on a roll right now, not only taking a piece of the FPS market pie, but also managing to weaken Activision by luring key members Jason West and Vince Zampella to step away from Infinity Ward, create their own studio and create a domino effect that has weakened Activision and threatening to damage Infinity Ward beyond repair.
Now, some gamers out there just don’t like EA. They see them as a company who lost its creative soul and just decided to churn out sequels and updates one after the other or some kind of monster that’s been hoarding developers while chopping others at the knees and weakening them,
Even if you don’t like EA for various reasons, you still have to give them grudging respect from starting out as a small company catering to the early home computer games industry, who actually gave credit to designers and programmers, which at the time, was an uncommon thing to do.
Now almost 28 years later, EA are one of the biggest third-party companies and with their ability to create successful franchises (The Sims, Need for Speed, FIFA and Fight Night to name a few).
It makes you wonder if someone from the Train2Game could strike lightning. One characteristic EA has is that they were ambitious (and somewhat still are) and many of the members in T2G seem to have this drive. As a result, we’ve seen studios being set up such as Horizon Studios, who have potential, with a clear agenda and a snazzy website, and Adarakion Games (where you can check out their Developer Diary to hear how they are progressing)
It will be very interesting (and exciting) to wonder what these studios (and many others being set up via the T2G forums) will provide with us in the future. Just imagine one day reading a gaming website or publication, seeing a game made by these development teams and saying “hey...I knew these guys and gals once!”
Or in my case, “hey, I chatted random stuff with these weird people once!”
Source: http://www.train2game.com/Games-Design-News/Gaming-Industry-News/EA-tops-March-UK-sales-ranking$19744925.html
