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Analyst: EA brand tarnished

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpotPosted Nov 30, 2006 12:43 pm PT

[UPDATE] Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson takes publisher to task for "poor game quality," missed opportunities; EA responds.

Electronic Arts' game adaptation of the hit summer movie Superman Returns was originally expected to release alongside the movie in June. However, in May EA told investors that it was "prioritizing game quality higher than making that date," and so had delayed the game to coincide with the movie's release on DVD.

EA's Superman Returns finally arrived in stores last week and was met with unkind reviews. Now one industry analyst is calling the situation "a microcosm of EA's continuing woes," and pointing to it as one part of a larger downward trend for the publisher.

"Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand," Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson told investors in a note distributed this morning. "According to our ongoing survey of GameRankings.com aggregated review data, Electronic Arts' overall game quality continues to fall."

A sister site to GameSpot, GameRankings.com compiles and averages review scores from hundreds of press outlets to allow readers access to a variety of opinions on any given game.

"Reviews of all of EA's annualized titles, its primary source of profit, have declined over the past two years," Wilson noted. "Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve. EA's aggregate review has also declined significantly in the past two years."

Wilson listed 20 of EA's recent annualized franchises, with averaged GameRankings scores by year across all platforms. For more direct comparisons, he also included scores for just the PlayStation 2 versions of the games. In nearly every case, the most recent version of an EA game scored lower than the version released in 2004. The company's NHL franchise maintained its 75.1 percent average across all platforms, while its MVP Baseball franchise notched up its multiplatform average from 86.3 percent to 86.7 percent.

As for which series were falling short, Wilson singled out "dramatic swings" in the average PS2 review scores of some of the company's top franchises. The analyst's numbers show that Need for Speed's averaged score has dropped 5.8 points, and NBA Live shed 13.1 points over the last two years. He noted that reviews don't always correlate to sales, but they tend to mirror a game's quality, which can affect its retail fortunes.

"The widespread industry belief is that one or two bad iterations can ruin the long-term value of a license, and we agree," Wilson said.

According to Wilson, EA has also missed some opportunities with its attempts to establish new franchises. He noted poor reviews of Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Marvel Nemesis, NFL Head Coach, and Arena Football in particular. And while The Godfather fared better with the critics than that batch, Wilson said the game's development and marketing costs kept it from meeting EA's profit expectations.

Wilson couldn't point to any one thing within EA that would cause a decline in game quality, but he said the company failed an attempt to standardize its studios on the RenderWare engine, was enduring "excessive employee turnover" that lowered the average experience level at the company, and that it has perhaps focused too much on quantity and not enough on quality.

Despite the down tone of the note, Wilson remained positive on investing in EA as a long-term opportunity, calling it "the marquee developer and publisher of video games."

"However, higher-than-expected development expenses, a ballooning number of developers and poor game quality have hurt EA's operating structure, in our view. Electronic Arts' growth rate and earnings power, we believe, will lag its top competitors in the near term."

[UPDATE] An EA representative has responded to Wilson's note, saying, "The EA brand is strong with great games from franchises that continue to break sales records. Across the portfolio, EA always strives to drive innovation and quality into its titles. EA continues to invest in next-generation development and technology which will translate into high quality gaming throughout the next console cycle."

557 Comments

  • elahi

    Posted Mar 29, 2007 11:09 am PT

    nice game i like to fly about like a bid but ecellent game with lots of potentioal

  • aaronfilmltd

    Posted Feb 14, 2007 3:41 pm PT

    EA is slowly but surely killing the powerful franchises we've come to love.

    Take Need for Speed for example. It all sarted as something new and innovative, but they've simply just run out of ideas. Need for Speed Carbon was beaten to death with a poor collection of licensed songs and sounds cut and pasted from Most Wanted. They're too busy dishing out game after game and aren't stopping to think about what made the series what it was before.

  • Electricall

    Posted Feb 4, 2007 6:59 pm PT

    This article kinda confirms what I already know. EA like to buy, they like to expand, and they like to make games that are decent. I've often seen in their games a good solid foundation, but little to make the title truly great.

    While I don't play a great deal of EA games, I can safely say that both the Need For Speed series and the Battlefield series have both had a drop in quality in their most recent iterations. Carbon just wasn't as good as earlier NFS games, and Battlefield 2142 was too much alike it's predecessor.

  • Amathyne

    Posted Dec 17, 2006 1:55 pm PT

    Disappointing. EA has always up to now been one of the few brands with a reliable amount of quality in its titles. I wonder what is causing the "excessive employee turnover" that Mr. Wilson mentions. I would sure like to get one of the former employee's thoughts on this. As for EA's response - updated at the end of the article - since it is obviously untrue, it only adds to the embarresement, and the sense that this company has blinders on over their rose-colored glasses. They are losing what has been their #1 strength - customer confidence in their quality.

  • Teeth_Mummy

    Posted Dec 10, 2006 6:31 pm PT

    I like Burnout. Everything else they put out doesn't matter to me. I want a good next gen Burnout for Ps3.

  • NA3D

    Posted Dec 9, 2006 3:54 pm PT

    Personally, I love EA. They have a lot of great people working for them, but saying "The EA brand is strong with great games from franchises that continue to break sales records. Across the portfolio, EA always strives to drive innovation and quality into its titles." -------------------- They really need to look again at the ratings people are giving their games. Madden 2005 was higher rated than 06 or 07. You can not honestly say that you make great games when the quality has dropped like it has. Not in the graphics, but in the gameplay. The graphics are great, but 06 was a slip up with Madden, and 07 was a fall on the floor. Then with a couple other titles, most importantly Superman Returns, you definitely cant say you make great games. -------------------- You have Will Wright, who yes, does make great games with his innovation, but that is not the innovation of EA until you have many people like him working across the board for your company. EA made great games as of 2004, as of 2006 they make good games. -------------------- I dont want EA to fail, I want them to be the biggest company, but with keeping extremely quality games, paying attention to the consumers, and taking care of your employees. Though yes Wilson went a little overboard, the response from EA goes 2 fold in the opposite direction. -------------------- The gamers are not really wanting EA to fail even. Just own up to the truth. Instead say, "We admit we have fallen behind a little in the past 2 years. We are going to dedicate ourselves to making it up to our consumers, and we want to pay them back for supporting us. We are very thankful for getting a response from our consumers, and are really going to listen to what they have to say. During our exploration in the next-generation development we plan on striving for greater innovation, greater quality in our games, greater consumer ratings from the games we put out, and overall become a greater company on the way. Plus, we are going to cut Kudo Tsunoda's hair, take away his sunglasses, force him to shave his face everyday, and duct tape his mouth because he says some out there things here and there. Not only that, we are also going to create positions to make sure our games are correct on the stats we put on sport stars." -------------------- In the end, just saying what they did was not the best thing. It would have been better to not say anything at all, because by saying something they have only made their consumers notice the article more, and prove that there is an out cry from their consumers that we want better games.

  • JediOverrider

    Posted Dec 8, 2006 6:58 am PT

    [UPDATE] An EA representative has responded to Wilson's note, saying, "The EA brand is strong with great games from franchises that continue to break sales records. Across the portfolio, EA always strives to drive innovation and quality into its titles. EA continues to invest in next-generation development and technology which will translate into high quality gaming throughout the next console cycle." ------------ To me that statement says: "Well our games are good whether you like them or not, and we are going to keep doing the same thing so get used to it." For this statement alone I will never buy another EA game, and I am encouraging all the gamers I know to do the same.

  • Blck134

    Posted Dec 6, 2006 3:34 pm PT

    I played Batman Begins, and it was good, the first playover, but afterwards I sit and mope that a GREAT, not just good, Batman game has come out in years. And sure Superman could be a great game but besides the GTA style gameplay, the game not only suck, it blows. EA, stop focusing on games based on other people's s*** and surprise us godd*** it.

  • thomass60r

    Posted Dec 6, 2006 7:42 am PT

    EA RULE

    i love there games like the godfather and so on

  • gdiza

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 11:42 pm PT

    Guys, EA is growing, and with that growth, they're going to start doing what every large company does, making mistakes, making understandard games etc.
    The thing is, if EA wants to come right, they are going to have to sit down, take a few breaths and think about what they are doing wrong and then maybe start from scratch, spend more money, not rush games, take time... A good game will sell more than a bad game.
    My venting comes from my experience with Cricket games that EA releases, their other sports games are always so good but their Cricket games are horrid, I recently got 2007 and that is just horrid, the PC hits me for 6's no matter what I do, the music is horrible, the sound on the PC version is just awful too... I'm sure I could find major problems with other EA games, but these are all problems where, had they taken time, put effort into it, did more testing and such, could've fixed and made more of enjoyable experience.

  • VeXeN

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 8:34 pm PT

    EA you guys just suck, just face the facts. I would love to debate how crappy your games are live on stage at this years E3.

    OWNED

  • VeXeN

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 8:31 pm PT

    "An EA representative has responded to Wilson's note, saying, "The EA brand is strong with great games from franchises that continue to break sales records. Across the portfolio, EA always strives to drive innovation and quality into its titles. EA continues to invest in next-generation development and technology which will translate into high quality gaming throughout the next console cycle." LOL with great games like Madden 07 and NBA Live 07!!!! I guess EA really thinks these games are great. I will never buy another EA game just from this comment.

  • Mono

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 5:46 pm PT

    What a news flash! Wow who knew a title with EA on the front would be riddled with bugs and of sub-par quality. Not me that's for sure.

    But seriously for me this all started with BF2. A game so filled with bugs as to be nearly unplayable at release and is even to this day too buggy and unbalanced to really enjoy. Basically any title with EA on it is now and rightfully should be looked at skeptically because even their games with favorable reviews are sub-par. You can only release so many money grab rushed titles before your name is tarnished.

  • SteelWingKnight

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 5:05 pm PT

    Die EA

  • KnightsofRound

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 3:15 pm PT

    The only game EA has released in recent years which I think any good at all is NHL 07 for the Xbox 360. All of their other games are terrible including anything in the NHL franchise that started in the year 2000.

  • starkiller99

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 2:27 pm PT

    Reading about EA has reminded me of the time-honored engineering expressing that everyone should know:

    Dilbert is a documentary, not a comic.

    Hold that near and dear to your hearts.

  • lord-azrael

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 10:49 am PT

    I could have told you EatAss sucked years ago,I remember the original Fifa,much better than todays version,you could tackle the referee and run away from him with him chasing you trying to hand out a card.Classic times,now it's all sequel sequel sequel,and they not usually even a sequel,more like a patch that fixes some old problems and creates much more

  • Watcher77

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 10:34 am PT

    EA always rushes games, its disgusting they think they can patch a game after its released, thereby releasing an unfinished game. An example, BF2142, had a patch almost 3 days after release...its sad really. Other companies are starting to try the same stuff, but EA has always done this.

  • bonik

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 9:59 am PT

    EA can suck our balls.

  • Bonehead01

    Posted Dec 5, 2006 9:00 am PT

    "P.S. to all the MBA's that I have offended. You earned it! Your masters degree program reads as if Tony Little wrote it. "You can do it!!!" - Axiomatic

    OMG, thats possibly the greatest thing I have ever read on this entire website, so true.

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