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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

  • ajadoniz

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 2:11 pm PT

    ever since EA digested C&C's Westwood Studios into unexciting feces, I have held disdain towards them. Its a good predictable stock though.

  • DaSlyOne

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:31 pm PT

    LOL, I love it when the big corporate weenies get slapped for sticking their hands in where they don't belong. Of course, they won't learn even if they run the company into the ground.

    I mean, come on they thought that a license to the NFL name would make their football games better. Nope, they only killed the competition and forced us to play Madden games with quality on a downward spiral. Competition = quality. If someone is making a better football game then you, you want to do better to stay ahead, otherwise, why care?

  • MisterFun

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:30 pm PT

    I saw a funny thing at Fry's yesterday pertaining to such a topic.

    I saw a whole full rack of Battlefield 2142 unsold.

    'nuff said!

  • aygol

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:27 pm PT

    EA is force-feeding the consumers the same junk every year, and every game made by EA is a piece of crap.

    But people will still buy those junk games, and that's why they will be the first in the chart. If you play NHL 06 and NHL 07, you can see that the old version is better than new version. Same thing for Need For Speed, NBA Live, and many other titles that are made by EA.

    I don't care about them anymore. We can play the best games that are made by best developers in the business.

    EA is a piece of crap. The games get worse every year.

  • pathogenb

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:26 pm PT

    "TongLong
    It's simple. Quit monopolizing licences and force-feeding consumers the same junk every year, and oh yeah, bring back a WELL MADE version of ROAD RASH!"

    you rule!!! Road Rash was my favorite Sega Genesis game. RR FTW!!!!

  • tico426

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:21 pm PT

    At last EA Games are being held accountble on the bad quality games they have been producing. I have thought EA have been poorely for many years now. I was an avid fan of their sports games and stopped buying them for the simple reason they just dont feel right anymore. This year I decided to invest in the latest NBA, NHL and FIFA. I am still dissapointed. NBA feels slack, NHL is ok and can be fun at times. And FIFA, let's just say I played something like this last year but developed by another publisher. The problem with this company is they are like Sony. They just seem to release title upon title and regardless od the quality the sales it seems is the important thing.

  • -MajinBuu-

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:05 pm PT

    meh.EA's been tarnished ever since.....

  • CPM_basic

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 11:10 am PT

    The problem with EA is that they are too focused on releasing a large quantity of games rather than releasing quality games. The last thing we need is crappy games, just like crappy movies. This industry has so many games but only so few are worth playing, it's starting to look like the movie industry. Maybe if EA didn't put so much pressure on their studios to release a game in a certain quarter, the studio could focus on making it a polished quality game that's actually fun to play. And EA's online servers suck for online games and Need for Speed Carbon is the worst NFS I've ever played.

  • bettsy1987

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 10:54 am PT

    With the exception of SOME of there sports games EA has produced very little last gen that i would say was good. But there are signs of change with Madden Wii showing the company is willing to really innovate we will just have to wait and see what happens.

  • L1qu1dSword

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 10:11 am PT

    I remember the first EA game I ever saw. It was Larry Bird 1 0n 1 on Commodore 64. For those that don't know that is a VERY old computer system with its best games looking on par with NES. Sometimes when slam dunking you could break the glass and a horribly drawn pixalated janitor would clean up the mess while swearing( i think he was cursing, all he said was bleep "bleep ble bleep bleep" which was about the best you could do on that system for voice). Ahhhh the good old days...

    Anyways damn these guys have been around for a while. I have to say that this looks a little overblown on gamespot's part. Why make an article on the strength of a single analyst. If this were actually credible then more then just one would be voicing their opinion on it. Im not even the largest fan of EA, but please, this brand is not going away anytime soon. Oh you went to Gamespot's sister site and found that average scores declined over a period of the last few years. Gimme a break. The average scores of ALL games drop in the last few years of a generation of consoles and especially during the transition years between the new generation as the developer inevitably has to spend a lot of it's effort simply adapting to new hardware.

    Sorry Gamespot but stuff like this makes you look like hacks.

  • spow

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 9:26 am PT

    i still remember when i was younger and i didnt knew if the videogames were good or not but if i saw EA logo i would buy it because it had very good games thats how i got Knockout Kings and Dune200 to playstation and a lot of games before that now if i see EA on it better look the other way nothing good in the box.

  • crushgoil

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 9:25 am PT

    The only EA game I've ever liked was SSX... and even it wasn't that great.. since then their games have steadily gotten worse..

  • zg2000fs

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 9:19 am PT

    drop dead EA... I havent played a decent game from EA in years... I dont even care about them anymore... there is plenty other games from other developers that more than substitute the EA games.... if you used to play FIFA, now play PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER and so on... far better games... EA is sh!t ...

  • TongLong

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 9:04 am PT

    It's simple. Quit monopolizing licences and force-feeding consumers the same junk every year, and oh yeah, bring back a WELL MADE version of ROAD RASH!

    ***EDIT***

    Whoa! I didn't notice your post at first, IsmirZone, another Road Rash fan!

  • LoneSnakeX

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 8:27 am PT

    EU should start investing more in Eastern European games like in Polen, Russia and Azerbaijan those countries make some good games and with EA assistance they can be great!

  • wenbin09

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 7:57 am PT

    i have to agree with the reports.. the quality just isn't quite near as what next gen had promised..

  • IsmirZone

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 6:34 am PT

    It's not that hard.....EAs greed will out them down one day. If they can dring some Road Rash games and Bring our Need For Speed back like it useto be. We all know thet got the NFL rights so they don't haveto make much effort on making it since there is no other developer like 2K to bake EA Sports games look bad. EA has proven they look bad anyways.

  • BlazinBlizzls

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 6:25 am PT

    down with EA there quality sucks with there buy out of the nfl rights and the game gets worse every year. NFL 2k 4 life

  • Oscar_the_Spaniard

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 3:20 am PT

    Well, I saw this coming this a long time ago. It's like the roman empire that falls and falls VERY HARD now. But IT WON"T FALL .It was like the time when people decreased the acquisition of american cars because their mileage per gas become expensive and the american vehicle industry had a hard time absorbing costs; after that everyone started to prefer japanese cars because they were cost effective, cheaper to maintain and optimized to do their job: BE DRIVEN.

    I can see EA packing their bags and running away from America, maybe to Asia, and continue to make crappy games, but this time via outsourcing, or by paying cheap dollars to foreigners willing and ready to do the job. The cost of making games just got too expensive. It doesn't need too much thinking to see that, LucasArts is doing it, every company with a big wallet does.

    As long as they continue to deliver +20 mediocre titles every year, you can count they will still make money. The name of the game is quantity, not quality. Think about Mac Donalds's, they will sell you mediocre food, by millions, just to calm your hunger.

    EA = SUB PAR GAMES
    MCDONALDS = FAST FOOD

    It's logical. Is there something surpirsing in this?
    The reason why this analyst is opening his mouth is because he is forseeing a decline on EA shares. Now everyone will run like horrified cattle and start selling EA shares at will. Like Mc Donald's, EA is also having popularity by their lawsuits, at least one every single year. Is that surprising?

    EA is a multinational corporation, not a developer. It was one, but that was about 20 years ago. It absorbed Bullfrog, Delphine Software, Maxis, Criterion, Westwood, Origin, just to mention some from a long list.. Just observe every PR or Marketing note, answer or reply they make.

    1) They never, ever say "WE APOLOGIZE" or "WE ARE SORRY"
    2) Instead they will say "We understand your concerns"

    They never "look up" to the customer, instead they "look you down". they "hear", they "understand" but they will never say it's their fault.

    It's just laughable, ridiculous. Corporate America always think that the customer is stupid, that it's the customer's fault. Not theirs. Recognizing failure will trigger an even worse public image. That's not a developer's answer. PR would just prefer to have an enema rather to say "We apologize"

    No matter what you say or what you do, they will still milk the cow in any way they can. Now the next step they will take will be to "Re-Invent themselves".

    As someone mentioned below, EA's Marketing Teams will again recieve better checks than the developer's just to invent a new strategy. They will come to you with "The New EA", or probably go back to "Electronic Arts" and use their former EOA logo again. EA paid millions to marketing for their false promises, and they will do it again. Is that surprising. EA still prays they will pull the rabbit from the hat.

    They will say "EA... Evolve" "EA Evolving Arts" or whatever **** they can get from their original minds.

    And people will believe again, but this will be their last chance to bring quality games. Yes they will believe, why? Because unfortunately and no offense but reality, the vast majority of the world's population is stupid, they don't have common sense, and they are cattle with no sense of leadership and with a deep hunger to feel special. They would go to Mc Donalds or EA, because there is nothing better to eat, they let themselves being fed with trash.

    Second step will be to laid off or even cut off %50 of the jobs, to increase investment in technology or what they call innovation. Only the good people, or the ones with big promising mouths will keep their jobs.

    If they fail again it will be the end of EA. They will fly away to Asia or do all their development operations via outsourcing. Or in the worst case be absorbed by Mr. Gates who could buy EA 20 times.

    That's what I see, knock knock reality is here...

  • knightsbore

    Posted Dec 3, 2006 1:14 am PT

    can you say rent! its easy its pretty cheap and you can tell if its crap and return it really quick! If you spend a huge amount of money without even trying something you will probably end up disappointed. So people who just buy the games: Realize that 5 bucks is less than 50.

    PC gamers: I wish they let us rent

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