EA Games chief Patrick Soderlund has been speaking to USA Today regarding the future plans of the company.
“As game makers, we have to continuously work and launch new intellectual properties into the market,” says Soderlund. “If we think we can live off of our existing brands and that only, I think it will not only be costly, but a short-lived mistake.”
Absolutely not referring to Activision’s ‘Let’s get every developer we have working on Call Of Duty’ philosophy, no sir.
“I still think there’s a lot of creative juice in brands like Battlefield and Need For Speed and a bunch of our franchises,” he continued, “but I also do think there’s a lot of room for new intellectual properties. We are investing in that today, and you will see new IPs from EA and the Games label in the future.”
Excellent news, now get to work on Mirrors Edge 2 please.
Source: USA Today
Jakster123x
He’s right, and so are you about Mirror’s Edge 2.
Rhyme.
stage1
LIVING OFF SEQUELS A “COSTLY, SHORT-LIVED MISTAKE”
I know EA are talking about COD but I’m sure Activision are laughing all the way to the bank with the money they make from each yearly rehash.
hazelam
if they are talking about actvision, then all i can say is, “pot, meet kettle”.
hazelam
he’s joking right?
somebody from ea criticising endless sequels?
they say americans don’t get irony, and clearly this one doesn’t.
or maybe he doesn’t know he works for ea.
gazzagb
EA often seem to forget they’ve been doing yearly releases for FIFA since 1995, yet dig at Acti whenever they can.
Awayze
Whereas EA have other major franchises that sell, Acti do not.
An-dz
They have taken that up with most EA sports games now havnt they, and theres been a Battlefield game every single year for the last few years too.
TROPtastic
Clearly you didn`t read the article properly.
Notice how he said “If we think we can live off of our existing brands and that only, I think it will not only be costly, but a short-lived mistake.”. Nowhere in that statement does he say, or even imply, that EA does not make endless sequels. In fact, if you had read his statement properly, you could have easily seen that he was talking about EA, his OWN company. In other words, he was criticising the practices of his own company.
Honestly, if you are going to bash EA, atleast be intelligent about it. It gets very old otherwise.
TROPtastic
Sorry, that comment was meant to refer to hazelam`s comment. My mistake for not pointing that out at the start.
SH Number 7/Mini-Lipscombe
That sounds promising about the next gen, but why the remark about Mirrors Edge 2, please don’t.
BrendanCalls
Pleasing attitude to have.
Personally think EA have got a good balance. They have to release the yearly franchises to help fund the risks they take on games like Mirrors Edge, Dead Space, Crysis, Dantes Inferno amongst others.
gazzagb
You need the franchises to be there to bring in almost ‘guaranteed’ money, so you can afford to take risks with new IP’s, and if they fail at first, support them even more rather than ditching them.
Just look at Assassins Creed. The first game had average reviews, wasn’t talked about too much and now AC3 is likely to be in the top 3 games of this year. So you need to put faith in new IP’s and allow them to continue even if things don’t go right the first time.
BrendanCalls
Exactly, Assassins Creed is a great example for that model
blarty
The question is, if the original Assassin’s Creed was released now, without changes, do you think the market now would give them the slack to improve the franchise with AC2. I doubt it, it’d be put down in the ‘IP sinks without a trace’ bucket….
While you’re talking about AC3, Ubiosoft have already said, that the only way they could finance the development for AC3 wasw through Brotherhood and Revelations, which people were chiding for being basically spin-offs.
I honestly don’t think that the economics of game and IP development are as simple as we often make them out to be.
If EA are going to do new IP great, if they’re going to do sequels that fans are asking for, also great – just don’t saturate the market with only sequels.
jayjay119
That’s all fine and well but when they do create new IPs that are popular, but not as popular as others [read didn’t make enough bags of money for EA to deem successful where other publishers would] and then keep fans in limbo about the future of it, yes I’m talking about Mirror’s Edge, then the franchises seem to be just what we all know they are: easy, safe money spinners.
Galgomite
This means they’re getting ready for next-gen. When else does do these behemoths start caring for new IPs?