So, there’s been some hubbub around Electronic Arts over the last few days, as the company ramps up for the release of its third quarter earnings on February 1st. Yesterday, EA’s stock closed at $17.54 per share, which, in context, meant that the gaming goliath’s stock was down 30 percent since hitting its 52-week high in early November. This drop was mostly due to the collective shock relating to the news concerning its recently released title, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which now has a ridiculous price tag attached to it — as Wall Street is estimating the cost to be between $150 and $200 million. → Read More
Back in August, social game developer Kixeye raised $18 million in series C financing, and added Zynga Andrew Trader to its Board of Directors. And today the self-proclaimed “largest maker of online strategy combat games” has announced the addition of another ex-Zynga exec into the fold.
Brandon Barber will be joining Kixeye as the SVP of Marketing, where he will report directly to Chairman and CEO Will Harbin. Barber brings significant gaming experience to Kixeye, as he previously co-founded online sports game developer Lionside, which was acquired by ngmoco (qua DeNA) in June of this year. Behind Barber (who was also VP of Marketing and Production), Lionside brought sports games to Facebook, and created titles like NBA Legend and Lionside Football. → Read More
After churning out a parade of sequels to all of their flagship games, has EA finally learned its lesson? Last month, EA CEO John Riccitiello said that his company is taking dead aim at Zynga, implying that perhaps the company understands what’s at stake, and is determined to be just as much of a player in digital games as it has been on consoles.
EA’s acquisition of PopCap Games, the makers of Plants Vs Zombies and Bejeweled, was a great way to convince investors (and fans) that it’s serious about making a play into online and social games. Granted, EA paid upwards of $1.3 billion for PopCap (with a market cap of right around $8 billion!), but it succeeded in snatching the casual game maker from the eager claws of Zynga, which made a $1 billion offer for the game developer. → Read More
The last ten years have been kind to game publishers. The mainstreamification of console gaming has led to enormous sales numbers, budgets rivaling Hollywood’s, and an arms race between the majors to create the next big game. But while EA and its ilk were buying up development houses, expanding like crazy, and having franchise-measuring contests with each other, an unperceived menace was growing in the dark bosom of Facebook. As millions flocked to the new platform, EA continued churning out sequel after sequel until they almost sequeled themselves into a death spiral.
Now the gaming giant says it has learned its lesson, and is ready to take on the new kid in town: Zynga. EA’s CEO has gone on the record saying they hope to hit $3 billion in digital revenue in the next two or three years. Big talk, but is it in EA’s DNA? → Read More
As we initially reported a few weeks ago, EA has acquired PopCap Games. The acquisition price is $650 million plus $100 million stock and a multi-year earn-out. The total acquisition price is as much as $1.3 billion.
PopCap Games is the company behind such hits as Plants vs Zombies, Zuma and Bejeweled. PopCap games have been installed 150 million times worldwide. Last year, approximately 80% of PopCap’s revenue was on digital platforms. → Read More
Following up on our story earlier this evening that PopCap Games is in late stage acquisition discussions for a sum of over $1 billion — we’ve now heard from two sources that the buyer is Electronic Arts.
The high price of the deal ($1+ billion) means that this would be a huge bet for EA — we’re talking over 13% of the company’s market cap. But we’re hearing that this is a Hail Mary pass from EA to break into mobile and social gaming — areas where the company hasn’t done nearly as well as it has in the console arena. → Read More
If you were hoping to pick up a copy of Crysis 2 on Steam, you’re out of luck. The game is no longer available on Valve’s download service, though it was not (strictly speaking) pulled by EA. While EA has explained in a statement that the title is simply incompatible with “a set of business terms” “imposed” by Steam, the language and context suggest that it was action by inaction — they don’t want Crysis 2 on Steam, and they’re all too happy to let it lapse. → Read More
Electronic Arts is today debuting Origin, a direct-to-consumer gaming platform, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. According to the placeholder website, expect Origin to go live around 9 AM Pacific time.
The platform will enable gamers to discover, buy and download more than 150 games from EA at its debut, with exclusive limited edition copies of EA games like Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12 coming later. → Read More
Electronic Arts is today debuting Origin, a direct-to-consumer gaming platform, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. According to the placeholder website, expect Origin to go live around 9 AM Pacific time.
The platform will enable gamers to discover, buy and download more than 150 games from EA at its debut, with exclusive limited edition copies of EA games like Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12 coming later. → Read More
We’re continuing to highlight some of our favorite moments from the many hours of backstage content live-streamed during Disrupt last week. One of my favorite sit-downs was with Bing Gordon, general partner of Kleiner Perkins.
A fireside chat with Gordon is always…unique. We didn’t get poetry this time, but we had a fascinating talk about how the cost of entertainment has collapsed from $1 an hour to as little as $.05 per hour. In terms of gaming, Gordon was one of the people who set the $1-per-hour price back in the 1980s while at Electronic Arts. (When the Bill Cosby-esque shirt to your left was also in fashion.) Now, he’s helping erode it as a board member and investor in Zynga. That’s the Silicon Valley ecosystem in a nutshell. → Read More
Electronic Arts (EA) has acquired Firemint, a privately held mobile development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. Firemint is the 60-people strong company behind games like Flight Control (see video below) and Real Racing.
EA says the deal is not material to the company, overall. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close within four weeks, were not disclosed. → Read More
Fans will be able to help decide who will be the Madden NFL 12 cover athlete. EA has teamed up with ESPN, creating a bracket system to narrow down a field of 32 players (one player from each team) to one lucky gentleman. Don’t mention the Madden curse. → Read More
Did EA ship the PC version of Dragon Age II with SecuROM DRM without telling anyone? It certainly looks that way. Reclaim Your Game’s analysis of the DVD (ie non-Steam) version of the PC game found that it does, in fact, contain SecurROM, and despite the fact that EA has a 28-page (!) EULA nowhere in there—nor anywhere else—is SecuROM mentioned. Furthermore, once installed, you can’t, as yet, cleanly uninstall SecuROM from your system, as the analysis finds that “DRM Removal tool not provided in game; Some files and registry keys remain.” Thanks, EA! → Read More
When that dev build of Crysis 2 leaked a few weeks ago, EA was quick to condemn the PC gaming community, saying that piracy “continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community.” I do wonder whether EA will be as quick to condemn console piracy now that Dragon Age 2, to be released next week, has also leaked. That’s right: the Xbox 360 version is now floating around out there, so it’s clear to me that console owners should now be subjected to the same kind of silly DRM that PC owners have had to put up with for years now. → Read More
Battlefield 3 doesn’t even have a release date yet, but EA has already started talking about DLC. Sigh. It’s a bit disappointing: so many of us here (well, me, Matt, and Devin) are genuinely looking forward to the game, and we’re already being teased with offers of almighty DLC. It’s so unsettling. → Read More
Danger Close, the developers of last year’s Medal of Honor reboot, has confirmed that it’s working on a sequel. In the words of Opie, “Good luck, bro.” → Read More
It would appear that Crysis 2 for the PC has leaked in some capacity. A quick look at some of the more popular sites when it comes to this kind of thing suggests that many thousands of people have no problem downloading Crytek’s unfinished game, which is due for release next month. Well, was due for release next month—who knows how this leak will affect development? → Read More
Still waiting for the PC version of Battlefield 1943? You’re going to be waiting quite a bit longer, I’m afraid—which is to say you’re going to be waiting forever as the game has been cancelled. Dice says it wants to focus on making Battlefield 3, the next game in the popular series, “the best Battlefield ever,” hence the cancellation. No use diverting resources to what amounts to a noisy distraction, right? → Read More
Quite a bit has been written about Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare’s upcoming MMO. So, here’s more writing. The latest is that EA, the game’s publisher, says that it will be profitable with only 500,000 subscribers. If all the planets align and they’re able to nab 1 million subscriber, whew! Swimming in money. → Read More
