14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is saying that the first quarter of the year has seen it double its sales to more than 800 million dollars. The best sold games were the recently launched Battlefield Bad Company from DICE and the UEFA EURO 2008 football sim, which sold well because of the European Championship.
Losses were reported as totaling 95 million dollars, a significant reduction over last year and a sign that Electronic Arts might turn up a profit this year, after all.
The bad news is that Tiberium, the squad based first person shooter set in the Command & Conquer universe, will be delayed and will come out sometime after March 31 of 2009. The good news is that the launch date for Spore is fast approaching and the game is shaping up to be something very special.
The company says that the new focus on community features and on social aspects for its games will be clearly seen as soon as Battlefield Heroes and Spore debut. The first game is set to be free to play, with no subscription required, and very easy to pick up and enjoy. The community features that EA talks about might include some form of integration with the Rupture social network which was recently acquired from Shawn Fanning, the man who previously created Napster. With Spore, which is developed by Maxis, some very interesting social features, like theSporepedia and the ability to upload videos directly to the Web, have already been demonstrated.
John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, has said that "We are now seeing the early returns of the change agenda we started last year. Innovation and quality are rising, our games are more accessible and fun, and we have more new titles than at any time in our history. From Spore on the PC to Dead Space on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to MySims on the Wii and Nintendo DS to Scrabble on the iPhone and Facebook, this is the best title portfolio in the company's history."
The company has admitted that it should focus on the Nintendo Wii more in the future to create more revenue sources. Taking a look at the financial results that Nintendo has posted, this seems like a very good idea.