EA says it was "on the wrong horse" when it came to next generation game development, promises development of new IPs to promote growth.
Yesterday at its quarterly investor's meeting, EA's CEO John Riccitiello told investors that 2007 was the toughest fiscal year ever for the company.
“[The last transition] was tough because we typically have two to three platforms and a five year period… One of the biggest challenges, of course, was that not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo that they’ve shown with their wand controller and their Wii. That got ahead of us a little more than our expectations." He said.
“Our stock hasn’t moved as much as we’d like," Riccitiello told a concerned investor during the Q&A session of the meeting. He also promised that EA would allocate more resources to developing Wii games, admitting that the company had been "on the wrong horse" during the console transition, having concentrated on PS3 and 360 instead, saying that the PS3 was the focus of game development in the last fiscal year, a console on which EA had seven titles.
He then optimistically told investors that EA had the second-largest market share on Wii as of March with 19 percent, thanks mainly to Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf. He then pointed out EA’s push to create new IP. He said that there is a “strong investment in [new] intellectual property", with games such as Army of Two, Rock Band, Crysis, a Stephen Spielberg Wii game and Playground. He told them that this change in company strategy, in conjunction with a company-wide reorganization would help jump start EA's financial growth and also promised them that it would make the company, and its investors money.
EA's stock closed at $50.65 that day, down 1.96 percent.