Andre Yoskowitz
10 May 2011 12:21
Electronic Arts (EA) CEO John Riccitiello has noted this week that the company will eventually move completely to digital distribution, killing off physical discs.
Says the CEO during the company's quarterly earnings conference call:
Over the coming years, we will transform EA from a packaged goods company, to a fully integrated Digital entertainment company. We're transforming EA to a games as a service model by focusing on three new strategies.
#1: IP. We believe we are driving the strongest portfolio of IP in the industry with EA Sports, FIFA, Hasbro, Madden, Pogo, Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, Tetris, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and more. We fully intend to make these properties into year-round businesses that lead their sectors across a range of platforms.
#2: Platform. Increasingly, we see ourselves as a software platform every bit as much as we see ourselves as a content maker for other companies platforms. We had a great start with 112 million consumers in our nucleus registration system, up from 61 million a year ago. And while we will continue to be a great partner to our best retail customers and our first-party partners, you will see the beginnings of a consumer game platform emerge at EA that complements and extends the console ecosystem and addresses the wider opportunity on other devices.
#3: Talent. To deliver on the 2 strategies above, IP and platform, we will expand on a model that is already working at EA, and only at EA. We are the only company with world-class teams working across platforms on social, mobile, and console development. We are integrating these teams and augmenting them with product monetization and marketing. It's a big change. As an investor, you can see this as a way to better manage our IP and drive up the ARPU for our core properties. As a developer, you can see this as the reason EA will be the most interesting and satisfying place to work in the game industry.
The shift, when it occurs, will be a massive one. EA is one of the largest video game publishers in the world. Its revenue relies heavily upon packaged goods selling at various retail outlets.