EA Springs New Branch on Old Arm

EA is a behemoth. Until being pushed to second spot by new Activision Blizzard they were the biggest games company in the world. EA is the company that has recently offered 2 billion dollars for Take Two and that publishes some of the longest running game series in the world. And let's not forget it's one of those games companies that has the money to finance AAA titles with up to 30 million dollars.

We recently heard that EA was not at all happy with how it managed studios like Bullfrog or Westwood, that were bought up and latter closed. We also heard from John Riccitiello, EA's top man, how the company will try and create a new paradigm in which innovation will be encouraged and studios within EA will be allowed more creative freedom. A lot of people watched these pronouncements with distrust, given EA's track record. But now we might be seeing the first actual move towards making good on those promises.

Being the big company that it is, Electronic Arts is divided into four "arms" that manage assets. There's EA Sports, EA Casual, EA Sims and EA Games. Now there's a new entity growing inside EA Games. It is aptly named Blueprint and its main task is to create games that showcase big ideas with small development teams and not much money at their disposal. Neil Young, head of the new entity, declared: "We focus on creating IP in new ways for our media and finding smart ways to spread it across the media landscape." Which, translated from corporate-speak, must mean that Blueprint will create more of a proof-of-concept type of games that EA Games can then exploit to build blockbusters upon.

Game development takes time so it is very likely we won't be seeing anything from Blueprint for a while. But the fact that it exists is hope enough that EA is really moving towards a new business model, where "new" and "exciting" are words is just as important as "profitable".

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