All kidding aside, John is one of the Co-Founders of Elevation partners, and so I doubt he was forced out in any way. He's got some serious clout, and he's been at or near the head of EA since 1997.
That being said, EA has become a real tyrannical monstrosity in recent years; I'd welcome some change.
The disappointing thing is that EA did go through a periodo f promising change - one that the free market rejected.
This would be about 2008-ish - EA invested heavily in new franchises, or different takes on existing ones. Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Battlefield: Bad Company (a huge departure from the Battlefield norm), etc.
None of which sold particularly well, and pretty much Dead Space is the only one that lived on as a franchise. The market voted with their wallets for more sequelitis.
When you are dealing with AAA budgets, anything less than 3M copies is likely a loss, and you usually have to venture into 5M copies to start actually making money, generating value and creating confidence in the brand / IP.
The AAA arms race has destroyed many studios, IPs and careers. 10 years ago, it used to be that one single hit could pay off your other 9 underperforming titles. With budgets going up 10x and top sales going up at best 2x, that balance can't hold and you have to be ruthless killing underperformers. I'm not a fan of Bobby Kotick (I was part of one of his layoffs!), but look at how he has led Activision as a company.
Does it matter? If their production costs are too high, they should find better ways of controlling costs; a game that sells 2.5 million copies is still a game that the market has validated.
> If their production costs are too high, they should find better ways of controlling costs;
They do: they find other games that are more profitable to make.
> a game that sells 2.5 million copies is still a game that the market has validated.
Corporations don't exist to be "validated" in some nebulous. They have to make money. I could get the market to wildly validate any product: give it away for free, or, hell, pay people to use it.
That unfortunately doesn't make for a successful business.
The point is that if 2.5 million people are willing to buy the game, the demand side of the equation is a settled one, and it's up to the supplier to find a way to turn that demand into a viable profit. If EA can't, then it's a problem with their own operations, not a problem with the product.
If someone else can produce a title that satisfies the demonstrated market demand for city-simulation games by producing one that is profitable, then they'll win and EA will lose.
Not sure about transformation - I never saw anything good in their books not in plans. My understanding that only reason why EA stock up last 3 months is because it is heavily shorted stock.
All kidding aside, John is one of the Co-Founders of Elevation partners, and so I doubt he was forced out in any way. He's got some serious clout, and he's been at or near the head of EA since 1997.
That being said, EA has become a real tyrannical monstrosity in recent years; I'd welcome some change.
Maybe get back to a little more of something like this: http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128776...