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1. The Old Republic is Likely a Bigger Disaster Than Anyone’s Saying

This was touched on briefly in the post yesterday about the SWTOR layoffs, but it’s perhaps a bit unclear as to how much EA had riding on The Old Republic. The game was meant to be the first serious threat to Activision/Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, yet failed to make much of an impact, and has been shedding users since launch.

Even if the game is halfway decent and has attracted a modest following of a million players or so (though it’s likely less than that now), that’s not enough to call it a success. Far from it, in fact. Though EA never officially released budgetary figures, estimates are the game took between $200 and $300 million to develop, with marketing costs inflating that figure to possibly as much as $500M. Even if the numbers are off by half, it would be one of the most expensive games ever made.

Since release, there have been many layoffs associated with SWTOR, including the executive producer of the game as announced yesterday. SWTOR might end up going free-to-play like so many other of World of Warcraft’s competition, but that’s not the model that’s going to earn them their money back. They really needed the monthly fee model to work, and the fact that it hasn’t makes the game a failure, no matter how many players a free-to-play switch may bring back.

Ouch! Access the other four reasons here.

And the fact that each studio they acquired they did this;

Milk out populair concept.
Deny development of unproven succesful game elements. (creativity chokehold) Lose talented people in the process that start up their own small companies or go work for other studios.

When the concept has been fully milked out, send the remaining work force home indefinitly or give them a job in making another sports game sequal or a populair IP, movie based title.


Big money and creativity never went hand and hand, considering big money dictates the ground rules based on spreadsheets, surveys and previous game sales.


Activison won't be spared from this either. For example crew making Torchlight 1 and 2 (dubbed diablo clone) excists out of several former blizzard North employees.

Might be bit of a stretch but perhaps we can draw some lines with the movie industry with the difference that they have a beter eye on things and more finicial backing there is offered to new talent.



tl;dr i think EA problems are much greater then just swtor, considering i picked up bits of how EA was making deadspace 3 less scary then it's predecessors in an attempt to up sales. Getting the impression that those managing companies like EA and Activision came from a completely different industry before being on the board there.

I'd have put SEQUELS in the top 5, which AcidBaron hit on with his Milking out of popular concepts. This is also hurting Hollywood as well.

On the flip side indie titles are the games with the biggest profit margins.

Also Would like to compare the profits in % of let's say the Witcher versus Mass Effect 3, both cross platform releases. Speaking of just the base sales considering Red projekt released content updates and improvements for free while EAbioware uphold a strictly DLC policy.

RED projekt claims that their ideology of giving free updates post launch combined with a re launch of a game (content patches for both their games being large additions of 10 gigabytes) to be a succesful tactic in getting a lot of sales in what made them able to pull it off twice with their physical publisher, who recommended against it initially.


Remember i'm speaking purely of procentages here.


(as for the hollywood comment, i would like to believe they learned if we looked at the 90's super hero movies and still some uwe boll movies compared to present movies, there's still a lot of nonesense but overal i find what you see in theaters these days has gone up compared to a decade ago)

You know, when I played WoW, I always thought "You know what? Re-skin this with Star Wars and it'd be great."

Boy, was I wrong.

I have to say Shayde that I said the exact same thing, and I was also sorely wrong.

I knew better.

Don't hate me because I am beautiful.

MMO_Doubter wrote:
I said it in 2004. I knew I was wrong in 2005. SWTOR proved my theory correct.

In 2004 I thought that directed content and enforced PVP would make SWG great. I was so wrong, and by the time I realized it the CU had dropped and killed the game for me.

"DON'T KNOW WHATCHU GOT, 'TILL IT'S GONE!!!!" - some hair metal guy.

Only five?

This is why EA is in decline.

1.)EA has no 'balance' when it comes to their games.

What I mean by that is EA will change a game way too much or not make any changes at all. Cases in point, Command and Conquer 4 and Metal of Honor. In the case of CnC 4 they changed the game so damn much from the core game everyone did like that the older fans hated it and the newer fans can't get into it or hear the older fans talking about how the old game was much more fun. Yes EA took a risk with it but they turned a the game from what people liked into a whole new game.

In the case with Metal of Honor, it looks just like the last Metal of Honor. Rather then try and do anything new with it, EA just rehashes the same game with some idea that it will pull in Call of Duty numbers. What EA doesn't look at is Call of Duty has changed things up every year. Even if it's just small game play changes or putting more into the game like Nazi Zombie mode. There's nothing new with Metal of Honor it's the same friggen game.

In other words we get titles that don't do anything new with them, or take everything everyone likes about the old title and throws everything out to do something 'new'.

2.)EA gives up way too easy.

I love talking about this when it comes to MMO's or hell any game really. You need long term goals and to plan out what you are going to do with that game. EA? Game comes out and if the game doesn't make that magic number in the higher ups heads then the game has been a failure, and they go about working on game X.

Take TOR, running an MMO is a long term thing and EA should know this when dear lord they have Ultima Online still up and running. Rather inside the first 3 months EA comes out and says "TOR isn't in our top 5." Give the game about a minute and a half at their big E3 show, and talks about more Sims crap. Hell I hear "Buy Metal of Honor now and get into the Battlefield 4 beta" and I'm already hearing "Battlefield 3 failed, it didn't make Modern Warfare 3 numbers."

Point being if EA put more time and money into the games they have. Rather then throw their hands up and say "Your right it sucks!" They would be better off.

3.)Too much greed is showing.

The fault here is with all of the day one DLC, Origin, making that new Metal of Honor $70 bucks. Grabbing up the NFL games years ago after Sega dared to make ESPN NFL2k5 $20 bucks. Forgetting that Mass Effect 3 has a single player game and doing more with the Online play due to EA selling 'loot boxes' and yes in this case I don't like the loot boxes I'll get to that in a sec. But well the greed shows way to f'n much.

Take the loot box thing, really in an MMO I really don't care why? If there's something I want from a loot box I'll save up and buy it from a player. ME3? Nope hell I had a friend who after one of the new ME3 Multiplayer DLC packs came out never saw one new class or gear drop from those packs for a week.

How about Origin? It strikes me and others as EA ditching a great online system like Steam to do their own thing. And Steam has daily sales, the big summer/winter sales. Origin? Hell I can get a 5 year old game for $30 bucks!

The greed shows way to much with EA. Hell if TOR had the players it wouldn't shock me if EA would be thinking of someway to do a patch/publish and charge the players money on top of their $15 a month.