EA Released Too Many New Games in 2008

Electronic Arts is a big video game publisher that, a few years ago, gained a reputation of exploiting its franchises and never releasing any new Intellectual Properties onto the market.

But in recent years, especially in 2008, the company managed to change and create a lot of new projects, which were released in the second half of the year. Titles such as Dead Space or Mirror's Edge shared shelf space with the likes of Madden NFL, FIFA or Need for Speed, but this led to many gamers not noticing the new releases.

This was a fault in strategy, as EA launched “too many new IPs,” at least according to the president of the EA Games label, Frank Gibeau, who talked with Gamasutra about how he would've liked to choose different launch windows for the new titles, when competition wouldn't have been so fierce.

“I think in the spirit of your question, I think we launched too many new IPs all at once in Q3. I would have spread them out and found better windows for them. I would have had longer marketing for them. The marketing cycles were fairly short. We didn't have enough assets to really build the fanbase, build the community, and get that long lead demand built. So I probably in hindsight would have picked a couple different windows for Dead Space and Mirror's Edge.”

But overall, after almost 8 months since the release of both of those games things have gotten better and they managed to sell a respectable number of units. This leads to some big expectations for their sequels which might even hold their own against other established franchises in the EA portfolio or from other companies in the industry.

Do you think that if Dead Space or Mirror's Edge had been launched in different time frames, like in the summer, people would have been more interested? Leave us a comment with your thoughts.