If EA Launched a Console

[RKRigney]

Just another thought to add to my previous post:

I never knew the real power of EA until I looked around at a vast majority of my friend's houses. Now keep in mind, these aren't "hardcore gamers", (definitely not the type of people to be found on a message board or to even read my site) but they all have about 12 games for their respective consoles. The games? Madden '05, Madden '06, Madden '07, Madden '08, NCAA Football '06, NCAA Football '07...

You get the point. That's not an exaggeration. There are a staggering number of console owners whose libraries look exactly like that. EA would succeed in the making of their own console because they don't rely on people like you. Like it or not, the bloggers and message board-frequenters do NOT represent the general populace.

Just a thought.

 

[bermyduck]

I don't think EA would succeed with a console, they need all the systems to sell as many copies of their games as possible. Nor do I think they would ever consider building a console. They will most likely sit back, feeding off their money makers that 'dudes' but year after year. And buy out more and more good up and coming developers, giving them more dosh and get larger and larger. They're thinking bigger market share...which wouldn't be good either, and pretty much has the same effect as them having an EA exculisive console, as Sony and Microsoft will have to tailor to them or risk losing the games.

 

[Lightbulb]

Stuff

Ok. BUT:

Consoles are sold at a loss to make people buy your games. If you buy a PS3 you should buy PS3 games. (Except the Wii which makes a profit for each consoles sold - this is a genius idea!)

EA sell bucket loads of games. They sell the same game every year. They can afford to develop for multiple platforms.

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So they gain: A monopoly on selling their games. They may make more per game now than they did.

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What do they lose?

A large market - currently EVERYONE can buy EA games. Hand helds, PC, all consoles. Why would you SHRINK your market?

Encourages competition: You think M$ and Sony will not have any sports games? Its not like they are that hard to make.

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I don't see the benefit. Especially when you factor in:

R&D cost
EA aren't a manufacturer they are a Publisher who owns Devs changing focus ALWAYS costs a lot of money.

 

[Lightbulb]

Another thought:

Look at the losses MS and Sony took in establishing their consoles. Big as EA is i can't see them swallowing those kinds of losses. Sony and MS have vast coffers - a loss (even a huge loss by conventional standards) can easily be absorbed by other vastly profitable divisions.

Whats EA's second string? Nothing AFAIK.


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But i guess the fundamental point is:

EA don't CARE about the console war - they sell to everybody.

 

[Asehujiko]

To the person wondering why we all hate EA:
Because when an exelent game series is made(Command and Conquer), EA will absorb it and start making an enormous ammount of sequels, expansions etc. This in itself isn't that bad but the fact that they let their marketing/legal division decide what gets into games and what not is.

See for example, cnc generals:
Dev 1: What's a good selling point these days?
Dev 2: The middle east.
Dev 1: Ok so lets toss all the backstory about Kane, Nod, Tiberium, Yuri and the Soviets that's basicly the heart and soul of the C&C franchise out of the window and replace it with a conflict in the middle east.
Dev 2: Wonderful idea!
Dev 1: What other games are people playing?
Dev 2: Starcraft.
Dev 1: Let's remove the classic C&C interface and get a starcraft one instead.
Dev 2: You're a genius!

EA spends more on marketing things that basicly sell on franchise name alone and when people realise that their favourite series is now nothing more then a group of 20 crappy spinoffs EA will just ditch it with the motto "it lived it's life and now is the time to move on, oh, by the way, how about you buying these 5 rehashes of a game we also sto - Insert another coin before reading the rest of the press release"

The C&C lineup:
Tiberian Dawn
Covert Ops
Tiberian Dawn PS
Red Alert
Counterstrike
Aftermath
Tiberian Sun
Firestorm
Red Alert 2
Yuri's Revenge
Renegade
EA's spinoff series cnc:
generals
zero hour
the first decade(compilation, no new game)
cnc 3 tiberium wars
kane's wrath
cnc3 mobile phone game
sagas(another compilation this time with tib wars included)
tiberium
another unnamed compilation
red alert 3
unnamed expansion
prognosis:
red alert 4
tiberium 2
compilation
red alert 5
cnc 4
compilation
tiberium 3
compilation

Each of EA's games so far is pretty far removed from that what once was Command and Conquer, both in story and in gameplay, most notable:

Tiberium is a highly toxic plant that can assimilate other nearby biomass but often grows bright green crystals that contain alot of useful minerals.
Changed to:
Tiberium is a sea green crystal that turns other things into crystal.

In 2020 the earth is covered almost entirely by various types of tiberium, tib algae clog up entire oceans and most of the few remaining cities are in ruin. GDI and Nod are struggling for control of these cities.
Changed to:
In 2020 there's a bunch of apparently atheist muslim-terrorists named the GLA running amok and the USA and China need to kill them. Occasionaly the commanders get bored and decide to engage in a friendly game of sending swarms of troops at eachother's bases and massacring them. Tiberium? What's that?

The story of cnc's first rainbow 6 ripoff err tactical fps:
A GDI hero in a state of the art cyborg suit and to fight an alien invasion along with a squad of constantly replaced regular soldiers. For some reason the aliens decide to only send biped soldiers instead of the regular 6 legged or flying ones.

The only difference between the artwork from this game and that from halo is the fact that there's a humongous EA logo covering about a quarter of each picture.

Don't get me started on the other games they ruined.

 

[AngryMan]

I thought it was pretty much established canon for those games that the C&C universe, the Red Alert universe and the Generals universe were all separate from each other?

They represent different story lines, different factions, and the only real similarity - what ties them together under the Command & Conquer name - is the game flow.

There are a lot of very valid complaints against EA, but this is not one of them.

At the same time, however, there are a lot of things to be praising EA for. They've published a number of my personal favourite titles - the Battlefield games, Crysis, and, yes, C&C. Sure, without EA those games could still have been published via some other company, but that's in some hypothetical not-ours universe.

As it stands, they're responsible for publishing a lot of very good games. Okay, so they've also published a lot of bland, uninspired sequels, expansions and series, but that's like the crappy grey rock that you mine the diamonds out of.

They're not anywhere near as bad as some of the gaming community's elitists like to think they are.

 

[Anarchemitis]

If EA made a console, I would not buy it because Sim City is only for PC.

 

[Arbre]

I think it's too risky for EA, even if they did manage to buy Take-Two. All it does is remove the competition within the established consoles, opening up the flood gates for other publishers to fill the void left by EA. EA is all about software, not hardware... then again, so was Microsoft. ;-)

Yeah, but this went on progressively. Microsoft already had a foot in hardware-specific software through the Dreamcast. They just needed to get the hardware part right. Their own babies run OSes not far from those you find on PCs.

EA, on the other hand... is there anything like an EA OS?