The games industry is also on the road to consolidation, but Electronic Arts has not said whether another company might acquire it.
Andrew Wilson, the publisher’s CEO, sidestepped the rumours of a takeover with his typical corporate marketing speak during the quarterly report (https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/167717336): “I think we’re in an excellent position. We’re soon the largest standalone, independent developer and publisher of interactive media in the world. I think we have the most incredible teams in our industry, and we’re attracting more and more incredible talent. We have a community that’s 600 million strong, and we’re well on our way to our aspirations to engage a billion people in play across the planet. […] I don’t think we could be in a stronger position as a standalone company. Our objective is always to take care of our people, our players, and our shareholders, and should there ever be a way for us to do that differently than the way we’re doing it today, I, of course, have to be open to that. But, I’ll tell you today that we feel very confident and excited about our future.” In other words: if a good offer comes along, Electronic Arts will give in…
The publisher is not neglecting its single-player games (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, Dead Space Remake, but the new Mass Effect is also a possibility). Wilson was asked how single-player products fit into EA’s portfolio. “Our players, on balance, have these core motivations—inspiration, escape, social connection, competition, self-improvement, creation—these things that bring us together as players of games, and the creation of worlds, the building of characters, and the telling of stories is critical in the fulfilment of some of those motivations. When we think about our portfolio and building it out, we think about it on two key vectors. One, how can we tell incredible stories? And two, how can we build tremendous online communities? And then how do we bring those two things together?
So, when you look at our portfolio, what you should be looking for is, how are we doing that? How are we building these worlds and telling these stories? How are we developing global online communities? And how are we bringing those two things together for the fulfilment of motivations? And what we see when we get that is one, we grow our network, and two, we increase the amount of time that players in our network spend in and around our games. And as we think about single-player games, we think it’s a vital part of the overall portfolio that we deliver in fulfilling those core motivations. And the way we plan for it over time is just looking at our community, how they’re spending their time, and where incentives may or may not be fulfilled. And we’ll look to supplement that with adding new online games, new multiplayer games, and new single-player games,” Wilson said. So they realised that pushing live service was not the best idea.
But EA CFO Chris Suh pointed out that live service accounts for almost three-quarters of the company’s cash flow: “If we think about the model impact and the financial impact of it, I think the first thing to always keep in mind is that live services still encompass, on a trailing 12-month basis, over 70% of our business, and that has been a proven, very reliable, highly reoccurring revenue stream, and that will still be the predominant driver in our P&L [profit and loss] long-term. Second, we’ve talked a lot about the areas of investment that we’re making. Both in the live service and some of the single[-player] title launches you’ve seen. And so over time, we’ll continue to invest, our long-term growth will continue to invest in the ongoing, stable performance of our live services business, and there’ll be some puts and takes along the way.”
So they’re not going to give up on what generates money for them. Next year, it’s a foregone conclusion that EA Sports FC 23 will have Ultimate Team…
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