Any attempt to link to this to SimCity would be a severe case of trying to fit a simple solution to something much more complex. You don't push out a guy who has been a top guy there for 15 years over that. Especially since people having been bitching about EA (Origin, DRM, etc.) for years.
Yes, it's true that firings and comings and goings are not caused by just singular events and milestones. But something like the SimCity fiasco provides enough political cover for executives to be pushed out. Riccitiello may have already been disliked by some in the company, but otherwise had enough support that it would've been difficult to uproot him. With the SimCity problem, there's enough "Well, that was a screwup" grumbling going on to make it an easier push.
Maybe it's not all due to SimCity, but that it was the final nail in the coffin?
Still, bit strange that this has anything to do with his performance. Although i don't like what EA has become, it's a much more profitable company than before he took the reigns.
I think you mean any attempt to say he got push out solely because of the SimCity fiasco... It's perfectly reasonable to wonder as to whether or not the SimCity launch had an effect on his position at EA.
It wouldn't be based too much on user complaints or metacritic scores for SimCity or any other game really. Underperforming revenue is likely the largest factor in Riccitello's departure. There has been a string of quarters hitting below/low on their outlook.
To Riccitello's credit, EA was in a terrible position pre-recession. A bad business plan, an inflated stock price and a bloated portfolio. JR had to make some brutal choices during the recession and has turned EA into a leaner beast, banking on online distribution and focusing on a smaller, higher quality portfolio.
And while the big picture of where he took EA is a logical one, I assume that the missed revenue from underperforming titles is the biggest factor in him stepping down. Of course, this is all conjecture on my part.
EA's business plan has been the same since the early 90s.
Step 1: Forcibly sodomize both customers and dev studios.
Step 2: ?????
Step 3: Profit.
In all seriousness though, I think that to make the company leaner, they were forced to abandon many franchises and platforms that they found to be unprofitable. The shitty part about this, is that if the business side of EA didn't insist on ruining the majority of the games that EA makes, many of them would have actually had a chance to stay profitable.
There have been numerous occasions where the features of a game don't match what has been printed on the back of the box.
Also, look at the Sim City fiasco. The people who purchased it couldn't even play the game in many cases, because they weren't able to connect to the authentication servers.
Could you explain to me why the SimCity launch was any worse than Diablo 3? Seems like apart from initial instability and some people making a lot of noise the resulting sales numbers were still fine.
I really doubt Simcity has anything to do with it. The real problem is that EA's stock took a big hit in '08, and has been stagnant since. Many of R's big initiatives, like the new-IP push, the studio acquisitions, and TOR have not paid dividends. Frankly, I'm surprised that he's lasted this long.
Exactly: but Simcity did not help. I think board members are like: "How did you even manage to screw up this? The game had good reviews and would help us repair our image - but it actually ended up as a disaster?"
I wouldn't be surprised if it affected the timing of his announcement - get all the bad news out at once and wipe the slate clean - bit it's been clear for some time that R. was in trouble if EA's financial situation didn't turn around soon. At this point it's pretty much guaranteed that the next step will be either a sale or severe cuts, likely planned out over the next couple of months so that they can be announced when their next earnings report is due. R. may just not have wanted to play the axe man.
I think I remember John promising not to repeat the Spore DRM debacle in one of those townhall meetings. He was there to change the EA-is-the-devil's-armpit image and the SimCity PR disaster is just another example of his failure.
Also, his worst nightmare was having another one of those ea-spouse letter pop out; not dissimilar from the anonymous self-bashing letter we saw last week.
I guess he's Being Accountable for his failed promises.
From what most game devs seem to say, most of the industry revolves around finding naive young developers who learned to program because they loved video games, hiring them on salary without explaining that they will work 80-100 hours per week (or promising overtime that you never intend to pay), and then spending the duration of the project reminding them how worthless they are and that there are a dozen CS grads who would love to take their places. Finally, having lost the will to live, they quit the business and settle down into nice, stress-free .NET jobs, where they will spend the next several years trying to regain faith in humanity.
I'd venture to say that it isn't caused by the SimCity fiasco, but could be used as a, "Hey guys we are trying to fix this, see?" Kind of move on EA's part. All I know for sure is there are too many people happy about this for it to not be related at all. (Not trying to say there's causation, just correlation.)
Yeah there is probably more to it than Sim City. Too bad EA turned into such a despicable company - the early days with the founder, Trip Hawkins, were a very different story. EA at its beginning was considering creators and developers as artists and treated them like rock stars. Those days are long gone.
While this is true, at the same time the article points out another external factor of games shifting to mobile and at the same time completely ignores the fact that EA is just utterly disconnected from what the consumer market actually wants.
The fact is that what the game market needs is the flexibility to play games how, when and where they want - this is the point of games - to be an enjoyable and accessible escape into their stories.
By consistently blocking users from being able to access the imagination time that games provide shows that you don't understand the intrinsic value that games provide to people.
