Electronic Arts
Encyclopedia
Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) is a major American developer
, marketer, publisher
and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins
, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer
games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games. It is one of the largest video game publishers in the world.
Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s. EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world's largest third-party publishers. On May 4, 2011, EA reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011. EA began to move toward direct distribution of digital games and services with the acquisition of the popular online gaming site Pogo.com in 2001. In 2009 EA acquired the London-based social gaming startup Playfish, and in June 2011, EA launched Origin, an online service to sell downloadable games directly to consumers. In July 2011, EA announced that it had acquired PopCap Games
, the company behind hits such as Plants vs. Zombies
and Bejeweled
.
EA is currently the No. 1 publisher in Western markets with a 16% segment share, and the second-largest social games company on Facebook
. EA's rankings have been propped up by the launch of The Sims Social
, which is currently the fastest-growing game on Facebook.
On May 4, 2011, EA reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011. On July 27, 2011, EA reported fiscal first-quarter profits had more than doubled on brisk sales of “highly-anticipated sports and shooter games.” EA earned $221 million, or 66 cents a share, in the three months that ended June 30. “That's up from earnings of $96 million, or 29 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose 23 percent to $999 million from $815 million.”
EA has moved into providing new digital gaming goods and services (including downloadable games, paid downloadable content, mobile games and social games), and revenue from digital sales this year “will likely total between $1.1 billion and $1.15 billion, representing a dramatic change in the company's business model.” EA earned $833 million in digital revenue last year.
EA’s earnings are marked by an ongoing difference between non-GAAP and GAAP accounting
– which, for example, mandates deferrals of revenue related to services provided for online-enabled packaged goods and digital content. Consequently, EA’s quarterly reports reflect hundreds of millions of dollars which, under GAAP accounting, are deferred for a period of months – then appear in the earnings over multiple quarters subsequent to the original sale. Other companies with significant online revenues face similar issues. This can make it extremely difficult to understand the company’s GAAP profitability.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games under several labels including EA Sports
titles, Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer
, NHL
, NCAA Football
, SSX
and NBA Jam
. Other EA labels produce established franchises such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims
, Medal of Honor
, Command & Conquer, as well as newer franchises such as Dead Space
, Mass Effect
, Dragon Age
, Army of Two
and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
, produced in partnership with LucasArts
. EA also owns and operates major gaming studios in Tiburon
in Orlando
, Burnaby, Vancouver
, Montreal
and DICE in Sweden
.
of Sequoia Capital
to discuss financing his new venture, Amazin' Software. Valentine encouraged Hawkins to leave Apple Inc., in which Hawkins served as Director of Product Marketing, and allowed Hawkins use of Sequoia Capital's spare office space to start the company. On 28 May 1982, Trip Hawkins incorporated and established the company with a personal investment of an estimated . Seven months later in December 1982, Hawkins secured of venture capital
from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Sevin Rosen Funds
.
For more than seven months, Hawkins refined his Electronic Arts business plan
. With aid from his first employee (with whom he worked in marketing at Apple), Rich Melmon, the original plan was written, mostly by Hawkins, on an Apple II
in Sequoia Capital's office in August 1982. During that time, Hawkins also employed two of his former staff from Apple, Dave Evans and Pat Marriott, as producer
s, and a Stanford MBA classmate, Jeff Burton from Atari for international business development. The business plan was again refined in September and reissued on 8 October 1982. Between September and November, employee headcount rose to 11, including Tim Mott, Bing Gordon
, David Maynard
, and Steve Hayes. Having outgrown the office space provided by Sequoia Capital, the company relocated to a San Mateo
office that overlooked the San Francisco Airport
landing path. Headcount rose rapidly in 1983, including Don Daglow
, Richard Hilleman
, Stewart Bonn, David Gardner, and Nancy Fong.
Hawkins was determined to sell directly to buyers. Combined with the fact that Hawkins was pioneering new game brands, this made sales growth more challenging. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. Despite this, revenue was in the first year and the next. After yet more flyers were handed out, former CEO Larry Probst
arrived as VP of Sales in late 1984 and helped the company sustain growth into in its third full year. Handing out yet more flyers and teaming with the existing sales staff that included Nancy Smith
, David Klein, and David Gardner, Probst built the largest sales force of any American game publisher. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave EA higher margins and better market awareness, key advantages the company would leverage to leapfrog its early competitors.
In December 1986 David Gardner and Mark Lewis moved to the UK to open a European headquarters. Up until that point publishing of Electronic Arts Games, and the conversion of many of their games to compact cassette
versions in Europe was handled by Ariolasoft
. A small company in Wales
was already called Electronic Arts, and until 1997 Electronic Arts in the UK was known legally as EOA, a name derived from its square/circle/triangle logo. The Welsh company ceased trading in 1997 and Electronic Arts acquired the rights to the name.
Most of the early employees of the company disliked the Amazin' Software name that Hawkins had originally chosen when he incorporated the company. While at Apple, Hawkins had enjoyed company offsite meetings at Pajaro Dunes
and organized such a planning offsite for EA in October 1982. Following a long business day at the offsite, the dozen employees and advisers who were present agreed that they would stay up that night and see if they could agree unanimously on a new name for the company.
Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers, "software artists." Hence, the latest version of the business plan had suggested the name "SoftArt". However, Hawkins and Melmon knew the founders of Software Arts
, the creators of VisiCalc
, and thought their permission should be obtained. Dan Bricklin did not want the name used because it sounded too similar (perhaps "confusingly similar") to Software Arts. However, the name concept was liked by all the attendees. Hawkins had also recently read a best-selling book about the film studio, United Artists
, and liked the reputation that company had created. Early advisers Andy Berlin, Jeff Goodby, and Rich Silverstein (who would soon form their own ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) were also fans of that approach, and the discussion was led by Hawkins and Berlin. Hawkins said everyone had a vote but they would lose it if they went to sleep.
Hawkins liked the word "electronic", and various employees had considered the phrases "Electronic Artists" and "Electronic Arts". Other candidates included Gordon's suggestion of "Blue Light", a reference from the movie Tron
. When Gordon and others pushed for "Electronic Artists", in tribute to the film company United Artists
, Steve Hayes opposed, saying, "We're not the artists, they are..." meaning that the developers whose games EA would publish were the artists. This statement from Hayes immediately tilted sentiment towards Electronic Arts and the name was unanimously endorsed.
A novel approach to giving credit to its developers was one of EA's trademarks in its early days. This characterization was even further reinforced with EA's packaging of most of their games in the "album cover" pioneered by EA because Hawkins thought that a record album style would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling. EA routinely referred to their developers as "artists" and gave them photo credits in their games and numerous full-page magazine ads. EA also shared lavish profits with their developers, which added to their industry appeal. Because of this novel treatment, EA was able to easily attract the best developers. The square "album cover" boxes (such as the covers for 1983's M.U.L.E.
and Pinball Construction Set
) were a popular packaging concept by Electronic Arts, which wanted to represent their developers
as "rock stars". After a very successful run on home computers, Electronic Arts later branched out and produced console games as well. Eventually Trip Hawkins left EA to found the now defunct 3DO
company.
EA is currently headquartered in the Redwood Shores
neighborhood of Redwood City
, California. Following the retirement and departure of Trip Hawkins, Larry Probst
took over the reins.
In 2004, EA made a multimillion dollar donation to fund the development of game production curriculum at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division
. On February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent. On June 20, 2006 EA purchased Mythic Entertainment
, who are finished making Warhammer Online.
After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL
, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN
. The ESPN deal gave EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11, 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company
(CLC) for exclusive rights to college football
content.
Much of EA's success, both in terms of sales and with regards to its stock market valuation, is due to its strategy of platform-agnostic development and the creation of strong multi-year franchises. EA was the first publisher to release yearly updates of its sports franchises—Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods, etc.—with updated player rosters and small graphical and gameplay tweaks. Recognizing the risk of franchise fatigue among consumers, EA announced in 2006 that it would concentrate more of its effort on creating new original intellectual property.
In September 2006, Nokia and EA announced a partnership in which EA becomes an exclusive major supplier of mobile games to Nokia mobile devices through the Nokia Content Discoverer. In the beginning Nokia customers will be able to download seven EA titles, Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 and FIFA Streets 2 the holiday season in 2006. Rick Simonson is the executive vice president and director of Nokia and starting from 2006 is affiliated with John Riccitiello and are partners.
, who had worked at EA for several years previously, departed for a while, and then returned. Riccitiello previously worked for Elevation Partners
, Sara Lee and Pepsico
. In June 2007, new CEO John Riccitiello announced that EA would reorganize itself into four labels, each with responsibility for its own product development and publishing (the city-state model). The goal of the reorganization was to empower the labels to operate more autonomously, streamline decision-making, increase creativity and quality, and get games into the market faster. This reorganization came after years of consolidation and acquisition by EA of smaller studios, which some in the industry blamed for a decrease in quality of EA titles. In 2008, at the DICE Summit, Riccitiello called the earlier approach of "buy and assimilate" a mistake, often stripping smaller studios of its creative talent. Riccitiello said that the city-state model allows independent developers to remain autonomous to a large extent, and cited Maxis and BioWare
as examples of studios thriving under the new structure.
Also, in 2007, EA announced that it would be bringing some of its major titles to the Macintosh
. EA has released Battlefield 2142
, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, Crysis
, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
, Madden NFL 08
, Need for Speed: Carbon
and Spore
for the Mac. All of the new games have been developed for the Macintosh using Cider, a technology developed by TransGaming that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows games inside a translation layer running on Mac OS X. They are not playable on PowerPC-based Macs.
In October 2007, EA purchased Super Computer International
, a long standing industry provider of game server hosting for development studios, who were currently developing the new Playlinc software. A week later they then purchased VG Holding Corp, the parent company of BioWare and Pandemic Studios
.
. After its initial offer of per share, all cash stock transaction offer was rejected by the Take-Two board, EA revised it to per share, a 64% premium over the previous day's closing price and made the offer known to the public. Rumours had been floating around the Internet prior to the offer about Take-Two possibly being bought over by a bigger company, albeit with Viacom
as the potential bidder. In May 2008, EA announced that it will purchase the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a South Korean mobile game developer and publisher. The company will become EA Mobile Korea. In September 2008, EA dropped its buyout offer of Take-Two. No reason was given.
As of Nov 6, 2008 it was confirmed that Electronic Arts is closing their Casual Label & merging it with their Hasbro
partnership with The Sims
Label. EA also confirmed the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, who was given the position as former president of the EA Casual Division in May 2007. EA made this statement about the merger: "We've learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the retirement and departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games—development and marketing—into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics. [...] In the days and weeks ahead, we will make further announcements on the reporting structure for the other businesses in the Casual Label including EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives. Those businesses remain growth priorities for EA and deserve strong support in a group that will compliment their objectives." This statement comes a week after EA announced it was laying off 6% about 600 of their staff positions & had a net loss for the quarter.
Due to the 2008 Economic Crisis
, Electronic Arts had a poorer than expected 2008 holiday season, moving it in February 2009 to cut approximately 1100 jobs, which it said represented about 11% of its workforce. It will also close 12 facilities, yet to be identified. Riccitiello, in a conference call with reporters, stated that their poor performance in the fourth quarter was not due entirely to the poor economy, but also to the fact that they did not release any blockbuster titles in the quarter. In the quarter ending December 31, 2008, the company lost . As of early May 2009, the subsidiary studio EA Redwood Shores was known as Visceral Games.
On June 24, 2009, EA announced it will merge two of its development studios, BioWare
and Mythic
into one single RPG and MMO
development powerhouse. The move will actually place Mythic under control of BioWare as Ray Muzyka
and Greg Zeschuk
will be in direct control of the new entity. The actual impact of this merger remains to be seen.
On November 9, 2009, EA announced its acquisition of social casual games developer Playfish
for . On the same day, the company announced layoffs of 1500 employees, representing 17% of its workforce, across a number of studios including EA Tiburon, Visceral Games
, Mythic
and EA Black Box. Also affected were "projects and support activities" that, according to Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown "don't make economic sense", resulting in the shutdown of popular communities such as Battlefield News and the EA Community Team. These layoffs also led to the complete shutdown of Pandemic Studios
.
In October 2010, EA announced the acquisition of UK based iPhone and iPad games publisher 'Chillingo' for in cash. While Chillingo publishes the popular Angry Birds
and Cut the Rope
games, the deal did not include those properties.
July 2011 EA Sports announced "To Dramatically Expand Austin Facility"..." EA Games President Frank Gibeau and EA SPORTS Chief Operating Officer Daryl Holt announced that EA SPORTS will be opening a new studio and adding hundreds of jobs right here in Austin, consistently recognized as one of the most inventive, creative, wired and rockin' cities in America...The new EA SPORTS studio in Austin will complement their existing studios in Tiburon, Florida and Burnaby, British Columbia."
The following are the Electronic Arts labels, with the studios that fall under each label
arm is dedicated to publishing and distributing games developed by third-party developers. Notable publishing/distribution agreements include:
-produced Ultima VIII: Pagan
and Ultima IX: Ascension
were developed quickly under EA's ownership, over the protests of Ultima creator Richard Garriott
, and these two are widely considered to be subpar compared to the rest of the series.
In early 2008, current CEO John Riccitiello acknowledged that this practice by EA was wrong and that the company now gives acquired studios greater autonomy without "meddling" in their corporate culture.
In 2008, John D. Carmack of id Software
said that EA is no longer the "Evil Empire" and decided to go with EA Partners, despite having a poor opinion of the publisher's past record.
takes a different set, and we're probably taking a third set".
EA was criticized for shutting down some of its acquired studios after they released poorly performing games (for instance, Origin). Though, in some of the cases, the shutdown was merely a reformation of teams working at different small studios into a single studio. The historical pattern of poor sales and ratings of the first game shipped after acquisition suggests EA's control and direction as being primarily responsible for the game's failure rather than the studio. In the past, Magic Carpet 2
was rushed to completion over the objections of designer Peter Molyneux
and it shipped during the holiday season with several major bugs. Studios such as Origin and Bullfrog Productions
had previously produced games attracting significant fanbases. Many fans also became annoyed that their favorite developers were closed down, but some developers, for example the EALA studio, have stated that they try to carry on the legacy of the old studio (Westwood Studios
). Once EA received criticism from labor groups for its dismissals of large groups of employees during the closure of a studio. However, later, it was confirmed that layoffs were not heavily confined to one team or another, countering early rumors that the teams were specifically targeted—countering the implication that the under performance of certain games might have been the catalyst.
EA was once criticized for the acquisition of 19.9 percent of shares of its competitor Ubisoft
, a move that many felt would lead to a hostile takeover but has not yet materialized. However, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot later indicated that a merger with EA was a possibility. "The first option for us is to manage our own company and grow it. The second option is to work with the movie industry, and the third is to merge," he said. However in July 2010, EA elected to sell its reduced 15 percent share in Ubisoft
That share equated to roughly .
EA was criticized in the media for its attempted hostile takeover of Take Two Interactive.
blog, with criticisms such as "The current mandatory hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30 p.m.)". The company has since settled a class action
lawsuit brought by game artist
s to compensate for unpaid overtime. The class was awarded . As a result, many of the lower-level developers (artists, programmers, producers, and designers) are now working at an hourly rate. A similar suit brought by programmers
was settled for .
Since these criticisms first aired, it's been reported that EA has taken steps to positively address work-life balance concerns by focusing on long-term project planning, compensation, and communication with employees. These efforts accelerated with the arrival of John Riccitiello
as CEO in February 2007. In December 2007, an internal EA employee survey showed a 13% increase in employee morale and a 21% jump in management recognition over a three year period.
In May 2008, 'EA_Spouse' blog author Erin Hoffman, speaking to videogame industry news site Gamasutra
, stated that EA had made significant progress, but may now be falling into old patterns again. Hoffman said that "I think EA is tremendously reformed, having made some real strong efforts to get the right people into their human resources department," and "I've been hearing from people who have gotten overtime pay there and I think that makes a great deal of difference. In fact, I've actually recommended to a few people I know to apply for jobs there," but also claims that she's begun to hear "horror stories" once again.
gives the average of EA games as 72.0 (out of 100); 2.5 points behind Nintendo
(74.5) but ahead of the other first-party publishers Microsoft (71.6) and Sony (71.2). The closest third-party publisher is Take-Two Interactive
(publishing as 2K Games and Rockstar Games) at 70.3. The remaining top 10 publishers (Sega
, Konami
, THQ
, Ubisoft
, Activision
) all rate in the mid 60s. Since 2005 EA has published five games, Battlefield 2
, Crysis
, Rock Band, Mass Effect 2
, and Dragon Age: Origins
that received Universal Acclaim (Metacritic score 90 or greater).
EA's aggregate review performance had shown a downward trend in quality over recent years and was expected to affect market shares during competitive seasons. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson had said, "Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand. According to our ongoing survey of GameRankings.com aggregated review data, Electronic Arts' overall game quality continues to fall...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 had also received criticism for developing games that lack innovation vis-à-vis the number of gaming titles produced under the EA brand that show a history of yearly updates, particularly in their sporting franchises. These typically retail as new games at full market price and feature only updated team rosters in addition to incremental changes to game mechanics, the user interface, and graphics. One critique compared EA to companies like Ubisoft and concluded that EA's innovation in new and old IPs "Crawls along at a snail's pace," while even the company's own CEO, John Riccitiello, acknowledged the lack of innovation seen in the industry generally, saying, "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play. For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat. There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before." EA has announced that it is turning its attention to creating new game IPs in order to stem this trend, with recently acquired and critically acclaimed studios BioWare and Pandemic would be contributing to this process.
, California alleging Electronic Arts is breaking United States anti-trust laws by signing exclusive contracts with the NFL Players Association, the NCAA and Arena Football League, to use players' names, likenesses and team logos. This keeps other companies from being able to sign the same agreements. The suit further accuses EA of raising the price of games associated with these licenses as a result of this action. However, in an interview with GameTap, Peter Moore claims it was the NFL that sought the deal. "To be clear, the NFL was the entity that wanted the exclusive relationship. EA bid, as did a number of other companies, for the exclusive relationship," Moore explained. "It wasn't on our behest that this went exclusive... We bid and we were very fortunate and lucky and delighted to be the winning licensee." More recently, EA has been sued by former NCAA players for allegedly using their images without compensation.
it was revealed that the DRM
scheme included a program called SecuROM
and a lifetime machine-activation limit of three (3) instances. A huge public outcry over this DRM scheme broke out over the Internet and swarmed Amazon.com with one-star ratings and critical reviews of the game in order to get EA to "pay attention to their consumers". This DRM scheme, which was intended to hinder the efforts of pirates to illegally use and distribute EA software, instead mainly affected paying customers, as the game itself was pirated well before release. On September 13, 2008, it was announced that Spore was the most pirated game ever with over half a million illegal downloads within the first week of release. In response to customer reaction, EA officially announced its release of upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
would increase the installation limit to 5 rather than 3. Many customers were still unsatisfied, claiming they were still renting the game at full price.
On September 22, 2008, a global class action law suit was filed against EA regarding the DRM in Spore, complaining about EA not disclosing the existence of SecuROM from the game manual, and addresses how SecuROM runs with the nature of a rootkit
, including how it remains on the hard drive even after Spore is uninstalled. On October 14, 2008, a similar class action lawsuit was filed against EA for the inclusion of DRM software in the free demo version of the Creature Creator.
On March 31, 2009, EA released a "De-Authorization Management Tool" that allows customers who have installed games containing the SecuROM activation scheme to "de-authorize" a computer, freeing up one of the five machine "slots" to be used on another machine.
On June 24, 2009, EA announced and formalized a change in its approach to preventing piracy of PC games. The company plans to drop all DRM from its games, replacing it with a traditional CD-key check. However, games will include content that is not present on the disc, requiring a download during the activation of the game. The intent is to create an incentive to buy a legitimate copy of the game. A general policy has been laid out with plans envisioning games more as services with a lot of content to freely download or buy linked to the game, some goodies and regular updates as a way to coax players to use the genuine copies of EA games.
was decried as sexist and ageist, with gamers claiming that it reinforcing out-dated stereotypes against female and older gamers. The game is rated M for Mature, and is therefore only recommended for players over the age of seventeen. Others thought the advertisements were pointless and would hurt market share. "The video game's campaign hinges on a unique premise – one that ignores how much the culture of gaming has changed." As of 2010, 40% of console-only gamers were women and the average game player was 34 years old.
For the advertising campaign, 200 women were selected for their conservative values and lack of familiarity with video games. Their reactions to a screening of the game were featured in EA's web and TV advertisements with the campaign slogan "Your mom hates Dead Space 2."
On February 24, 2011, the Extra Credits team of The Escapist published 'An Open Letter to EA Marketing' in their weekly video column, denouncing Electronic Arts' marketing decisions for the Dante's Inferno
, Medal of Honor
and Dead Space 2
releases. They argue that EA's decisions to hire fake protesters and market games solely on shock value, while neglecting to defend the Medal of Honor on a 1st Amendment basis for letting the player play as the Taliban, have been hurtful to the gaming industry. They also argue that the advertisements are counterproductive to Electronic Arts' wishes to elevate games to an art medium as demonstrated in the 1980s Electronic Arts ad 'Can a Computer Make You Cry?'.
Electronic Arts also published a number of non-game titles. The most popular of these was closely related to the video game industry and was actually used by several of their developers. Deluxe Paint
premiered on the Amiga
in 1985 and was later ported to other systems. The last version in the line, Deluxe Paint V, was released in 1994. Other non-game titles include Music Construction Set
(and Deluxe Music Construction Set
), Deluxe Paint Animation
and Instant Music
.
EA also published a black and white animation tool called Studio/1, and a series of Paint titles on the Macintosh: Studio/8 and Studio/32 (1990).
of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle indeed stood for "E" and "A", but that the circle was merely "a Nerf
ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been popping up on our splash screens ever since." Other customers saw the logo as a stylized "ECA". The circle may have been put in to separate the E and the A.
Nancy Fong and Bing Gordon came up with the idea to hide the three shapes on the cover of every game, borrowing the idea from the urban legend
s concerning the placement of the bunny symbols on the covers of Playboy
magazine. Finding the logo's hidden placement on early EA titles was a ritual for employees whenever a new cover was displayed outside Fong's cubicle. In December 1986 David Gardner and Mark Lewis moved to the UK to open a European headquarters. Up until that point publishing of Electronic Arts Games, and the conversion of many of their games to compact cassette versions in Europe was handled by Ariolasoft
.
The current EA logo was derived from the logo used by sub-brand EA Sports
. It was first used, in a different form, in 1988, when Electronic Arts introduced the "EASN" brand (later changed to "EA Sports" due to legal difficulties with ESPN
). The logo was modified and adopted company-wide around 1999.
The in-game logo introduction has changed several times since the inception of Electronic Arts. In late-1990s to 2001, Originally an explosion sound effect accompanying the letters for "Electronic Arts" flying into formation, followed by an electronic voice. The sound effects have changed in certain games (sounds of the letters whipping past, for example). In 1999 to 2003, An outlined circle flips and forms the modern EA Games logo. Accompanied by a synthesized ping sound. In 2002 to 2004, EA Games logo appearing on screen, accompanied by a very loud voice saying "EA Games" followed by a whisper saying "challenge everything". In 2005, Silver EA logo appearing then fading away. *2006 to present: The logo is different with every game, taking on certain visual aspects of the game it is presented with. However the EA letters always remain the same and the logo always remains a circle.
The company's slogan has changed several times since the company's inception. Initially, it was "We see farther." – Founding tag line, then "EA Games, challenge everything.", then "EA Sports, it's in the game." – a shortened version of their original slogan "If it's in the game, it's in the game.". "EA Sports, it's in the game" is spoken by Andrew Anthony.
Video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...
, marketer, publisher
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins
Trip Hawkins
William M. 'Trip' Hawkins III is a Silicon Valley American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company and Digital Chocolate....
, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games. It is one of the largest video game publishers in the world.
Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s. EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world's largest third-party publishers. On May 4, 2011, EA reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011. EA began to move toward direct distribution of digital games and services with the acquisition of the popular online gaming site Pogo.com in 2001. In 2009 EA acquired the London-based social gaming startup Playfish, and in June 2011, EA launched Origin, an online service to sell downloadable games directly to consumers. In July 2011, EA announced that it had acquired PopCap Games
PopCap Games
PopCap Games is an American video game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs about 400 people...
, the company behind hits such as Plants vs. Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense action video game developed and originally published by PopCap Games for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game involves a homeowner using many varieties of plants to repel an army of zombies from "eating their brains". It was first released on May 5, 2009,...
and Bejeweled
Bejeweled
Bejeweled is a puzzle game by PopCap Games, first developed for browsers in 2001. Three follow-ups to this game have been released. More than 75 million copies of Bejeweled have been sold, and the game has been downloaded more than 500 million times....
.
EA is currently the No. 1 publisher in Western markets with a 16% segment share, and the second-largest social games company on Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
. EA's rankings have been propped up by the launch of The Sims Social
The Sims Social
The Sims Social is a Facebook addition to the Sims series of videogames. It was announced during EA's 2011 E3 press conference. As with the original Sims games, this addition lets users create their own customizable characters. In this version, though, players use their characters to interact...
, which is currently the fastest-growing game on Facebook.
On May 4, 2011, EA reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011. On July 27, 2011, EA reported fiscal first-quarter profits had more than doubled on brisk sales of “highly-anticipated sports and shooter games.” EA earned $221 million, or 66 cents a share, in the three months that ended June 30. “That's up from earnings of $96 million, or 29 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose 23 percent to $999 million from $815 million.”
EA has moved into providing new digital gaming goods and services (including downloadable games, paid downloadable content, mobile games and social games), and revenue from digital sales this year “will likely total between $1.1 billion and $1.15 billion, representing a dramatic change in the company's business model.” EA earned $833 million in digital revenue last year.
EA’s earnings are marked by an ongoing difference between non-GAAP and GAAP accounting
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles refer to the standard framework of guidelines for financial accounting used in any given jurisdiction; generally known as accounting standards...
– which, for example, mandates deferrals of revenue related to services provided for online-enabled packaged goods and digital content. Consequently, EA’s quarterly reports reflect hundreds of millions of dollars which, under GAAP accounting, are deferred for a period of months – then appear in the earnings over multiple quarters subsequent to the original sale. Other companies with significant online revenues face similar issues. This can make it extremely difficult to understand the company’s GAAP profitability.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games under several labels including EA Sports
EA Sports
EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...
titles, Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer
FIFA (series)
FIFA, also known as FIFA Football or FIFA Soccer, is a series of association football video games, released annually by Electronic Arts under the EA Sports label...
, NHL
NHL series
NHL is a series of professional ice hockey simulation video games developed by EA Canada and published yearly by Electronic Arts under the EA Sports brand...
, NCAA Football
NCAA Football series
NCAA Football is a football video game series in which you play as any current Division I FBS college team. This game is developed by EA Sports. Because of NCAA rules, current college players are not permitted to be used as the cover athletes...
, SSX
SSX (series)
SSX is a series of snowboarding and skiing videogames published by EA Sports BIG. It is an arcade-style racing game with larger-than-life courses, characters, and tricks...
and NBA Jam
NBA Jam (series)
"NBA Jam" is a basketball arcade/video game series focusing primarily on an exaggerated style of basketball play. In the series, players jump many times above their own height, can make slam dunks that defy human capabilities, and can freely shove or elbow opponents out of the way...
. Other EA labels produce established franchises such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims
The Sims (series)
The Sims is a video game series developed by Maxis and later by The Sims Studio, and published by Electronic Arts. It is one of the most successful video games series of all time...
, Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor (series)
Medal of Honor is the name of a series of first-person shooter games set in World War II, with an October 2010 reboot based on the conflicts of present day Afghanistan. The first game was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for the PlayStation game console...
, Command & Conquer, as well as newer franchises such as Dead Space
Dead Space (series)
Dead Space is a media franchise created by Glen Schofield, developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise centers on a series of video games of the survival horror and third-person shooter genres, and also includes two motion pictures and a comic book series, with more...
, Mass Effect
Mass Effect (series)
Mass Effect is an award-winning, bestselling series of science fiction RPG third-person shooter video games developed by the Canadian company BioWare and released for the Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows and, from the second installment, for the PlayStation 3...
, Dragon Age
Dragon Age
Dragon Age: Origins is a single-player role-playing video game developed by BioWare's Edmonton studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise...
, Army of Two
Army of Two
Army of Two is a third person shooter video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on March 4, 2008 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game is centered upon two mercenaries fighting through war, political turmoil, and a conspiracy from 1993 to 2009...
and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (series)
The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series, often abbreviated as KotOR, is a comic book and RPG video game series based on the fictional universe of Star Wars by George Lucas. The first video game installment was developed by BioWare, while the second was done by Obsidian Entertainment per...
, produced in partnership with LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
. EA also owns and operates major gaming studios in Tiburon
Tiburon
Tiburon may refer to:Places* Tiburon, California* Tiburón Golf Club Naples, Florida* Tiburón Island, an island in the Gulf of California* Tiburon Peninsula, a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area of California...
in Orlando
Orlando
Orlando is a major city in the U.S. state of Florida.Orlando may also refer to-Places:* in Florida** Orlando, a major city** Greater Orlando, the 27th-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
, Burnaby, Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
and DICE in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
.
1982–1991
In February 1982, Trip Hawkins arranged a meeting with Don ValentineDon Valentine
Donald T. "Don" Valentine is an influential venture capitalist who concentrates mainly on technology companies in the United States. He has been called the "grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital"...
of Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
to discuss financing his new venture, Amazin' Software. Valentine encouraged Hawkins to leave Apple Inc., in which Hawkins served as Director of Product Marketing, and allowed Hawkins use of Sequoia Capital's spare office space to start the company. On 28 May 1982, Trip Hawkins incorporated and established the company with a personal investment of an estimated . Seven months later in December 1982, Hawkins secured of venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Sevin Rosen Funds
Sevin Rosen Funds
Sevin Rosen Funds is a venture capital firm that was established in 1980 by L. J. Sevin and Ben Rosen. SRF was involved in the financing of Citrix, Cypress Semiconductor, Electronic Arts, Lotus Development Corporation, Silicon Graphics, and Vitesse Semiconductor...
.
Business plan
A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals....
. With aid from his first employee (with whom he worked in marketing at Apple), Rich Melmon, the original plan was written, mostly by Hawkins, on an Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
in Sequoia Capital's office in August 1982. During that time, Hawkins also employed two of his former staff from Apple, Dave Evans and Pat Marriott, as producer
Game producer
A video game producer is the person in charge of overseeing development of a video game.The earliest documented use of the term producer in games was by Trip Hawkins, who established the position when he founded Electronic Arts in 1982...
s, and a Stanford MBA classmate, Jeff Burton from Atari for international business development. The business plan was again refined in September and reissued on 8 October 1982. Between September and November, employee headcount rose to 11, including Tim Mott, Bing Gordon
Bing Gordon
William "Bing" Gordon is an executive in the video game industry. He served ten years as Chief Creative Officer of video game publisher and developer Electronic Arts prior to his current partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers...
, David Maynard
David Maynard
David Maynard is a computer programmer and game programmer who has spent his career working at various companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Early in his career, he worked on many historic projects, including the Xerox Star while at Xerox PARC and on Doug Englebart's team that produced The...
, and Steve Hayes. Having outgrown the office space provided by Sequoia Capital, the company relocated to a San Mateo
San Mateo, California
San Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of approximately 100,000 , it is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the east, Belmont to the south,...
office that overlooked the San Francisco Airport
San Francisco International Airport
San Francisco International Airport is a major international airport located south of downtown San Francisco, California, United States, near the cities of Millbrae and San Bruno in unincorporated San Mateo County. It is often referred to as SFO...
landing path. Headcount rose rapidly in 1983, including Don Daglow
Don Daglow
Don Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995...
, Richard Hilleman
Richard Hilleman
Richard Hilleman is an American computer game and video game producer best known for his work creating the original Madden Football game for video game consoles for Electronic Arts. Apart from Madden, Hilleman was a key figure in building the massive EA Sports brand and has spent over 20 years...
, Stewart Bonn, David Gardner, and Nancy Fong.
Hawkins was determined to sell directly to buyers. Combined with the fact that Hawkins was pioneering new game brands, this made sales growth more challenging. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. Despite this, revenue was in the first year and the next. After yet more flyers were handed out, former CEO Larry Probst
Larry Probst
Lawrence F. "Larry" Probst III is the Chairman and former President and CEO of Electronic Arts . He was succeeded by John Riccitiello on April 2, 2007...
arrived as VP of Sales in late 1984 and helped the company sustain growth into in its third full year. Handing out yet more flyers and teaming with the existing sales staff that included Nancy Smith
Nancy Smith
Nancy Smith is a former Ottawa City Councillor. She represented St. George's Ward from 1980 until 1991.Prior to being elected, Smith served in Federal and Provincial Public Services for ten years. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Psychology from Dalhousie University, and a Master of Arts...
, David Klein, and David Gardner, Probst built the largest sales force of any American game publisher. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave EA higher margins and better market awareness, key advantages the company would leverage to leapfrog its early competitors.
In December 1986 David Gardner and Mark Lewis moved to the UK to open a European headquarters. Up until that point publishing of Electronic Arts Games, and the conversion of many of their games to compact cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
versions in Europe was handled by Ariolasoft
Ariolasoft
Ariolasoft GmbH, later known as United Software, was a German computer game developer, publisher and distributor. It started as the software subsidiary of Ariola Records...
. A small company in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
was already called Electronic Arts, and until 1997 Electronic Arts in the UK was known legally as EOA, a name derived from its square/circle/triangle logo. The Welsh company ceased trading in 1997 and Electronic Arts acquired the rights to the name.
Most of the early employees of the company disliked the Amazin' Software name that Hawkins had originally chosen when he incorporated the company. While at Apple, Hawkins had enjoyed company offsite meetings at Pajaro Dunes
Pajaro, California
Pajaro is a census-designated place in Monterey County, California, United States. Pajaro is located on the south bank of the Pajaro River northeast of its mouth, at an elevation of 26 feet . The population was 3,070 at the 2010 census, down from 3,384 at the 2000 census...
and organized such a planning offsite for EA in October 1982. Following a long business day at the offsite, the dozen employees and advisers who were present agreed that they would stay up that night and see if they could agree unanimously on a new name for the company.
Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers, "software artists." Hence, the latest version of the business plan had suggested the name "SoftArt". However, Hawkins and Melmon knew the founders of Software Arts
Software Arts
Software Arts was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc, which was published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc...
, the creators of VisiCalc
VisiCalc
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool...
, and thought their permission should be obtained. Dan Bricklin did not want the name used because it sounded too similar (perhaps "confusingly similar") to Software Arts. However, the name concept was liked by all the attendees. Hawkins had also recently read a best-selling book about the film studio, United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, and liked the reputation that company had created. Early advisers Andy Berlin, Jeff Goodby, and Rich Silverstein (who would soon form their own ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) were also fans of that approach, and the discussion was led by Hawkins and Berlin. Hawkins said everyone had a vote but they would lose it if they went to sleep.
Hawkins liked the word "electronic", and various employees had considered the phrases "Electronic Artists" and "Electronic Arts". Other candidates included Gordon's suggestion of "Blue Light", a reference from the movie Tron
Tron (film)
Tron is a 1982 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Lisberger, and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It stars Jeff Bridges as the protagonist Kevin Flynn; Bruce Boxleitner in a dual role as security program Tron and Tron's "User", computer programmer Alan Bradley; Cindy...
. When Gordon and others pushed for "Electronic Artists", in tribute to the film company United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, Steve Hayes opposed, saying, "We're not the artists, they are..." meaning that the developers whose games EA would publish were the artists. This statement from Hayes immediately tilted sentiment towards Electronic Arts and the name was unanimously endorsed.
M.U.L.E.
M.U.L.E. is a seminal multiplayer video game by Ozark Softscape. It was published in 1983 by Electronic Arts. It was originally written for the Atari 400/800, and was later ported to the Commodore 64, the Nintendo Entertainment System and the IBM PC Jr. Japanese versions also exist for the...
and Pinball Construction Set
Pinball Construction Set
Pinball Construction Set is a computer game by Bill Budge published by Electronic Arts. It was released for the Apple II and Atari 800 in 1983 and was later ported to other platforms, such as the Commodore 64 and DOS .-Description:...
) were a popular packaging concept by Electronic Arts, which wanted to represent their developers
Video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...
as "rock stars". After a very successful run on home computers, Electronic Arts later branched out and produced console games as well. Eventually Trip Hawkins left EA to found the now defunct 3DO
The 3DO Company
The 3DO Company , also known as 3DO , was a video game company...
company.
1991–2007
Redwood Shores, California
Redwood Shores is an affluent waterfront neighborhood located in San Mateo County on the San Francisco Peninsula in California. It is located on the eastern edge of Belmont, but is actually part of incorporated Redwood City....
neighborhood of Redwood City
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, California. Following the retirement and departure of Trip Hawkins, Larry Probst
Larry Probst
Lawrence F. "Larry" Probst III is the Chairman and former President and CEO of Electronic Arts . He was succeeded by John Riccitiello on April 2, 2007...
took over the reins.
In 2004, EA made a multimillion dollar donation to fund the development of game production curriculum at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division
USC Interactive Media Division
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media Division first accepted students in 2002. In addition to coursework in film production, screenwriting, and animation, students in the division study across three disciplines within interactive media: immersive...
. On February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent. On June 20, 2006 EA purchased Mythic Entertainment
Mythic Entertainment
BioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot...
, who are finished making Warhammer Online.
After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
. The ESPN deal gave EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11, 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company
Collegiate Licensing Company
The Collegiate Licensing Company is an American collegiate trademark licensing and marketing company. Founded in 1981 by Bill Battle in Selma, Alabama, CLC is the largest and oldest collegiate licensing company in the United States and currently provides its services to more than 200 colleges and...
(CLC) for exclusive rights to college football
College football
College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...
content.
Much of EA's success, both in terms of sales and with regards to its stock market valuation, is due to its strategy of platform-agnostic development and the creation of strong multi-year franchises. EA was the first publisher to release yearly updates of its sports franchises—Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods, etc.—with updated player rosters and small graphical and gameplay tweaks. Recognizing the risk of franchise fatigue among consumers, EA announced in 2006 that it would concentrate more of its effort on creating new original intellectual property.
In September 2006, Nokia and EA announced a partnership in which EA becomes an exclusive major supplier of mobile games to Nokia mobile devices through the Nokia Content Discoverer. In the beginning Nokia customers will be able to download seven EA titles, Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 and FIFA Streets 2 the holiday season in 2006. Rick Simonson is the executive vice president and director of Nokia and starting from 2006 is affiliated with John Riccitiello and are partners.
2007
In February 2007, Probst stepped down from the CEO job while remaining on the Board of Directors. His handpicked successor is John RiccitielloJohn Riccitiello
John Riccitiello is the CEO of Electronic Arts .He received his Bachelors of Science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley....
, who had worked at EA for several years previously, departed for a while, and then returned. Riccitiello previously worked for Elevation Partners
Elevation Partners
Elevation Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The firm has $1.9 billion of assets under management....
, Sara Lee and Pepsico
PepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
. In June 2007, new CEO John Riccitiello announced that EA would reorganize itself into four labels, each with responsibility for its own product development and publishing (the city-state model). The goal of the reorganization was to empower the labels to operate more autonomously, streamline decision-making, increase creativity and quality, and get games into the market faster. This reorganization came after years of consolidation and acquisition by EA of smaller studios, which some in the industry blamed for a decrease in quality of EA titles. In 2008, at the DICE Summit, Riccitiello called the earlier approach of "buy and assimilate" a mistake, often stripping smaller studios of its creative talent. Riccitiello said that the city-state model allows independent developers to remain autonomous to a large extent, and cited Maxis and BioWare
BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
as examples of studios thriving under the new structure.
Also, in 2007, EA announced that it would be bringing some of its major titles to the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
. EA has released Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 2142 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Digital Illusions CE and produced by Electronic Arts . It is the fourth game in the Battlefield series...
, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, Crysis
Crysis
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek , published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, and released in November 2007. It is the first game of a trilogy. A separate game entitled Crysis Warhead was released on September 12, 2008, and follows similar...
, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling, and was published on 21 June 2003 by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom, Scholastic in the United States, and Raincoast in Canada...
, Madden NFL 08
Madden NFL 08
Madden NFL 08 is the 2008 edition of the American football video game series published by EA Sports and developed by EA Tiburon. It is the 19th installment in the Madden NFL video game franchise. It features Titans star quarterback Vince Young on the cover. San Diego Chargers defensive end Luis...
, Need for Speed: Carbon
Need for Speed: Carbon
Need for Speed: Carbon, also known as NFS Carbon or NFSC, is an Electronic Arts video game belonging to the Need for Speed series. Released in 2006, it is the tenth installment, preceded by Need for Speed: Most Wanted, succeeded by Need for Speed: ProStreet in release order and succeeded by Need...
and Spore
Spore (2008 video game)
Spore is a multi-genre single-player god game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game was released for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems in September 2008 as Spore...
for the Mac. All of the new games have been developed for the Macintosh using Cider, a technology developed by TransGaming that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows games inside a translation layer running on Mac OS X. They are not playable on PowerPC-based Macs.
In October 2007, EA purchased Super Computer International
Super Computer International
-History:In 2005, SCI's gaming platform was used by Cnet-owned subsidiary to launch GameCenter service.In May 2007, Verizon had acquired an equity position position in SCI ....
, a long standing industry provider of game server hosting for development studios, who were currently developing the new Playlinc software. A week later they then purchased VG Holding Corp, the parent company of BioWare and Pandemic Studios
Pandemic Studios
Pandemic Studios was founded as an independent developer in 1998, it became an Electronic Arts-owned developer from 2007 to 2009, when it was officially closed. It was an Australian and American video game developer with offices in Brisbane, Australia and Los Angeles, California...
.
2008–present
It was revealed in February 2008 that Electronic Arts had made a takeover bid for rival game company Take-Two InteractiveTake-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is a major American publisher, developer, and distributor of video games and video game peripherals. Take-Two wholly owns 2K Games and Rockstar Games. The company's headquarters are in New York City, with international headquarters in Windsor, United Kingdom...
. After its initial offer of per share, all cash stock transaction offer was rejected by the Take-Two board, EA revised it to per share, a 64% premium over the previous day's closing price and made the offer known to the public. Rumours had been floating around the Internet prior to the offer about Take-Two possibly being bought over by a bigger company, albeit with Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
as the potential bidder. In May 2008, EA announced that it will purchase the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a South Korean mobile game developer and publisher. The company will become EA Mobile Korea. In September 2008, EA dropped its buyout offer of Take-Two. No reason was given.
As of Nov 6, 2008 it was confirmed that Electronic Arts is closing their Casual Label & merging it with their Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
partnership with The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
Label. EA also confirmed the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, who was given the position as former president of the EA Casual Division in May 2007. EA made this statement about the merger: "We've learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the retirement and departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games—development and marketing—into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics. [...] In the days and weeks ahead, we will make further announcements on the reporting structure for the other businesses in the Casual Label including EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives. Those businesses remain growth priorities for EA and deserve strong support in a group that will compliment their objectives." This statement comes a week after EA announced it was laying off 6% about 600 of their staff positions & had a net loss for the quarter.
Due to the 2008 Economic Crisis
Late 2000s recession
The late-2000s recession, sometimes referred to as the Great Recession or Lesser Depression or Long Recession, is a severe ongoing global economic problem that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008. The Great Recession has affected the entire world...
, Electronic Arts had a poorer than expected 2008 holiday season, moving it in February 2009 to cut approximately 1100 jobs, which it said represented about 11% of its workforce. It will also close 12 facilities, yet to be identified. Riccitiello, in a conference call with reporters, stated that their poor performance in the fourth quarter was not due entirely to the poor economy, but also to the fact that they did not release any blockbuster titles in the quarter. In the quarter ending December 31, 2008, the company lost . As of early May 2009, the subsidiary studio EA Redwood Shores was known as Visceral Games.
On June 24, 2009, EA announced it will merge two of its development studios, BioWare
BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
and Mythic
Mythic Entertainment
BioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot...
into one single RPG and MMO
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
development powerhouse. The move will actually place Mythic under control of BioWare as Ray Muzyka
Ray Muzyka
Dr. Ray Muzyka is a Canadian entrepreneur. He is the CEO at BioWare Corp as well as a Senior Vice President and Group General Manager of the BioWare RPG/MMO Group of Electronic Arts at BioWare's parent company Electronic Arts.-Career:Muzyka co-founded BioWare in...
and Greg Zeschuk
Greg Zeschuk
Dr. Gregory P. Zeschuk is a VP and Group Creative Officer at BioWare Corp. and Electronic Arts. He co-founded BioWare in 1995 with BioWare’s other co-founder and Group GM/CEO, Dr...
will be in direct control of the new entity. The actual impact of this merger remains to be seen.
On November 9, 2009, EA announced its acquisition of social casual games developer Playfish
Playfish
Playfish, currently a property of Electronic Arts, is a developer of free-to-play social network games. Playfish was founded in 2007 by Kristian Segerstråle, Sebastien de Halleux, Sami Lababidi and Shukri Shammas. In October 2008, they secured USD$17 million in venture capital funding from Accel...
for . On the same day, the company announced layoffs of 1500 employees, representing 17% of its workforce, across a number of studios including EA Tiburon, Visceral Games
Visceral Games
Visceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:...
, Mythic
Mythic Entertainment
BioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot...
and EA Black Box. Also affected were "projects and support activities" that, according to Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown "don't make economic sense", resulting in the shutdown of popular communities such as Battlefield News and the EA Community Team. These layoffs also led to the complete shutdown of Pandemic Studios
Pandemic Studios
Pandemic Studios was founded as an independent developer in 1998, it became an Electronic Arts-owned developer from 2007 to 2009, when it was officially closed. It was an Australian and American video game developer with offices in Brisbane, Australia and Los Angeles, California...
.
In October 2010, EA announced the acquisition of UK based iPhone and iPad games publisher 'Chillingo' for in cash. While Chillingo publishes the popular Angry Birds
Angry Birds
Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for Apple's iOS in December 2009...
and Cut the Rope
Cut the Rope
Cut the Rope is an award-winning physics-based puzzle video game for handheld gaming platforms. It was developed in 2010 by Russian developers ZeptoLab and is published by Chillingo. On iOS, it uses the Crystal and Game Center social networking services. On Android, it uses Scoreloop social...
games, the deal did not include those properties.
July 2011 EA Sports announced "To Dramatically Expand Austin Facility"..." EA Games President Frank Gibeau and EA SPORTS Chief Operating Officer Daryl Holt announced that EA SPORTS will be opening a new studio and adding hundreds of jobs right here in Austin, consistently recognized as one of the most inventive, creative, wired and rockin' cities in America...The new EA SPORTS studio in Austin will complement their existing studios in Tiburon, Florida and Burnaby, British Columbia."
Company structure
All of EA's labels and studios are overseen by CEO John Riccitiello who has held the position since 2007. Many have attributed Riccitiello's success in leading EA to his passion as a gamer.The following are the Electronic Arts labels, with the studios that fall under each label
- EA Games—Home to the largest number of studio and development teams, this label is responsible for action-adventure, role playing, racing and combat games, marketed under the EA brand. In addition to traditional packaged-goods games, EA Games also develops massively-multiplayer online role-playing games. Led by Frank Gibeau.
- Visceral GamesVisceral GamesVisceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:...
(formerly EA Redwood Shores) - EA Los AngelesEA Los AngelesEA Los Angeles is a video game developer founded originally in 1995 as DreamWorks Interactive LLC, a subsidiary of DreamWorks SKG....
(formerly Westwood Studios) - EA MontrealEA MontrealEA Montreal is a video game development studio owned and operated by Electronic Arts. The studio is based in Montréal, Québec. It was inaugurated by EA on March 17, 2004. The studio was founded by Alain Tascan a former Ubisoft and BAM! Entertainment executive. It is one of a few examples where EA...
- BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
Edmonton - BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
Austin - BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
Montreal - BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
Mythic (formerly Mythic EntertainmentMythic EntertainmentBioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot...
) - EA Digital Illusions CE (formerly Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, DICE)
- EA Black Box (formerly Black Box Games)
- EA PhenomicEA PhenomicEA Phenomic is a real-time strategy video game developer, headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, and founded as Phenomic Game Development in 1997...
- EA Victory GamesEA Victory GamesEA Victory Games is a video game developer founded in 2010.After EA Los Angeles started up there new internal group Danger Close and switched it's focus to the Medal of Honor series, EA launched a new studio named Victory Games to continue the Command & Conquer franchise...
- Criterion GamesCriterion GamesCriterion Games is a Guildford, England based British video game developer. It is best known for its work on the award-winning, multi-platform Burnout series, the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox first-person shooter Black.Criterion Software Ltd was created in 1993 to commercialise 3D...
- Visceral Games
- EA SportsEA SportsEA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...
—Publishes all the realistic, casual, and freestyle sports-based titles from EA, including FIFA Football, Madden NFLMadden NFLMadden NFL is an American football video game series developed by Electronic Arts Tiburon for EA Sports. The game series is named after Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden, a well-known former Super Bowl-winning coach of the Oakland Raiders and color commentator...
, Fight Night, NBA Live, NCAA Football, CricketCricket 07Cricket 07 is a cricket simulation computer game from EA Sports and developed by HB Studios. It is available for Windows and PlayStation 2.The game was released in the UK on 24 November 2006 and in Australia on 14 November 2006...
, NCAA March MadnessNCAA Basketball seriesThe NCAA Basketball series was a College basketball game published by EA Sports from 1995 until 2009. After EA Sports' rival publisher 2K Sports cancelled its own college basketball game, College Hoops, in 2008, EA changed the name of the series from NCAA March Madness to NCAA College Basketball...
, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, NHL Hockey, NASCAR and Rugby. Led by Andrew Wilson.- EA TiburonEA TiburonEA Tiburon is an Electronic Arts video game development studio located in Maitland, Florida, United States founded in 1994. It is located just north of the Orlando, Florida downtown area. It was formerly known as Tiburon Entertainment, which was acquired by EA in 1998.The studio is most well known...
(Florida) - EA CanadaEA CanadaEA Canada is a video game developer located in Burnaby, British Columbia. The development studio opened in January 1983 and is EA's largest and oldest studio...
(Burnaby) - EA-NC (North Carolina)
- EA Tiburon
- EA Play—Creates and publishes casual games for gamers and non-traditional gamers. Includes EA Hasbro and their UK based development studio Bright Light. EA Play also includes The Sims seriesThe Sims (series)The Sims is a video game series developed by Maxis and later by The Sims Studio, and published by Electronic Arts. It is one of the most successful video games series of all time...
developing and marketing life-simulation games and online communities, including those with "Sims" titles. Led by Rod Humble.- Maxis
- The Sims StudioThe Sims StudioThe Sims Studio is a division under Electronic Arts's EA Play label. The studio is responsible for the production and expansion of the popular game franchises The Sims and future SimCity titles.-History:...
- EA Interactive—Includes EA's Pogo.comPogo.comPogo.com is a gaming website that offers a variety of free casual games, from card and board games to puzzle, sports, and word games. It is owned by Electronic Arts....
online service, PlayfishPlayfishPlayfish, currently a property of Electronic Arts, is a developer of free-to-play social network games. Playfish was founded in 2007 by Kristian Segerstråle, Sebastien de Halleux, Sami Lababidi and Shukri Shammas. In October 2008, they secured USD$17 million in venture capital funding from Accel...
and EA Mobile. Led by Barry Cottle.
Studios and subsidiaries
Current
- BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
in EdmontonEdmontonEdmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, Alberta, Canada and Montreal, Quebec, Canada and AustinAustin, TexasAustin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Texas, founded in February 1995, acquired October 2007 from Elevation PartnersElevation PartnersElevation Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The firm has $1.9 billion of assets under management....
. - Criterion GamesCriterion GamesCriterion Games is a Guildford, England based British video game developer. It is best known for its work on the award-winning, multi-platform Burnout series, the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox first-person shooter Black.Criterion Software Ltd was created in 1993 to commercialise 3D...
in GuildfordGuildfordGuildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, England, founded as Criterion Software in 1993, acquired in August 2004. - Bright Light, in GuildfordGuildfordGuildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, Surrey, formerly EA UK http://www.eagames.co.uk/ - EA CanadaEA CanadaEA Canada is a video game developer located in Burnaby, British Columbia. The development studio opened in January 1983 and is EA's largest and oldest studio...
in Burnaby, British ColumbiaBurnaby, British ColumbiaBurnaby is a city in British Columbia, Canada, located immediately to the east of Vancouver. It is the third-largest city in British Columbia by population, surpassed only by nearby Surrey and Vancouver....
, started in January 1983. - EA Casual Entertainment
- EA China in Shanghai, China
- EA Deutschland in CologneCologneCologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Germany - EA Digital Illusions CE in Stockholm, Sweden
- EA France in LyonLyonLyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, France - EA Freestyle in San Francisco, California, founded as EA Sports BIG.
- EIS (European Integration Studio)European Integration StudioElectronic Arts' European Integration Studio is based in Madrid, Spain and is the company's largest specialized studio for videogame internationalization and localization. When the studio opened it doubled the total number of workers devoted to developing entertainment software in Spain...
in Madrid, Spain - EA India, NoidaNoidaNoida , short for the New Okhla Industrial Development Area, is an area in India under the management of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority . Noida came into administrative existence on 17 April 1976 and celebrates 17 April as "Noida Day". It was set up as part of an urbanization...
, India - EA Brazil, São PauloSão PauloSão Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Brazil - EA Korea in SeoulSeoulSeoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
, South Korea, started in 1998. - EA Los AngelesEA Los AngelesEA Los Angeles is a video game developer founded originally in 1995 as DreamWorks Interactive LLC, a subsidiary of DreamWorks SKG....
in Los Angeles, California (includes Medal of Honor team, Danger Close), founded as DreamWorks Interactive LLC in 1995, acquired in 2000. - EA Romania in Bucharest, Romania, founded as JAMDAT Mobile Romania in 2005, acquired in 2006.
- EA Russia in Moscow, Russia, translate in Russian
- EA Mobile in Hyderabad, India
- EA Mobile in São Paulo, Brazil
- EA MontrealEA MontrealEA Montreal is a video game development studio owned and operated by Electronic Arts. The studio is based in Montréal, Québec. It was inaugurated by EA on March 17, 2004. The studio was founded by Alain Tascan a former Ubisoft and BAM! Entertainment executive. It is one of a few examples where EA...
in Montreal, Quebec, Canada started in 2004. - EA North Carolina in Morrisville, North CarolinaMorrisville, North CarolinaMorrisville is a town in Wake County, North Carolina, United States. A small portion of the town extends into Durham County. The population was 18,576 according to a April 1, 2010 census. Morrisville is part of the Research Triangle metropolitan region...
- EA PhenomicEA PhenomicEA Phenomic is a real-time strategy video game developer, headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, and founded as Phenomic Game Development in 1997...
in Ingelheim, GermanyIngelheim am RheinIngelheim am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on the Rhine’s west bank. The town calls itself the Rotweinstadt and since 1996 it has been Mainz-Bingen’s district seat....
, founded as Phenomic Game Development in 1997, acquired August 2006. - EA Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah, founded as Headgate StudiosHeadgate StudiosEA Salt Lake is a video game developer located in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is owned by video game publisher Electronic Arts .EA Salt Lake was founded by the studio's president, Vance Cook, as Headgate Studios in 1992...
, founded in 1992, acquired December 2006. - EA Singapore in Singapore http://www.ea.com.sg/
- EA SportsEA SportsEA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...
in Vancouver, Canada and Redwood City, CaliforniaRedwood City, CaliforniaRedwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, publisher of EA's sports franchise games - EA TiburonEA TiburonEA Tiburon is an Electronic Arts video game development studio located in Maitland, Florida, United States founded in 1994. It is located just north of the Orlando, Florida downtown area. It was formerly known as Tiburon Entertainment, which was acquired by EA in 1998.The studio is most well known...
in MaitlandMaitland, FloridaMaitland is a suburban city in Orange County, Florida, United States, part of the Greater Metro Orlando area. The population was 12,019 at the 2000 census. As of 2006, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 14,172...
, Florida, founded as Tiburon Entertainment in 1994, acquired in 1998. - Easy Studios in StockholmStockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden. Founded in 2008 developing PC games for EA's new Play4Free series. - Maxis in EmeryvilleEmeryville, CaliforniaEmeryville is a small city located in Alameda County, California, in the United States. It is located in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, extending to the shore of San Francisco Bay. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and...
, California Currently a label only. - Mythic EntertainmentMythic EntertainmentBioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot...
in FairfaxFairfax, VirginiaThe City of Fairfax is an independent city forming an enclave within the confines of Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Although politically independent of the surrounding county, the City is nevertheless the county seat....
, Virginia, founded as Interworld Productions in 1995, acquired in June 2006. - North American Testing Center in Baton Rouge, LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, opened in September 2008. - PlayfishPlayfishPlayfish, currently a property of Electronic Arts, is a developer of free-to-play social network games. Playfish was founded in 2007 by Kristian Segerstråle, Sebastien de Halleux, Sami Lababidi and Shukri Shammas. In October 2008, they secured USD$17 million in venture capital funding from Accel...
in London, England acquired in 2009. - PopCap GamesPopCap GamesPopCap Games is an American video game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs about 400 people...
in Seattle, WashingtonSeattle, WashingtonSeattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
acquired in 2011. - EA Victory GamesEA Victory GamesEA Victory Games is a video game developer founded in 2010.After EA Los Angeles started up there new internal group Danger Close and switched it's focus to the Medal of Honor series, EA launched a new studio named Victory Games to continue the Command & Conquer franchise...
in Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas and Shanghai, China; founded in 2010. - Visceral GamesVisceral GamesVisceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:...
in Redwood CityRedwood City, CaliforniaRedwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, California, also has offices in Montreal, Canada and Shanghai, China; founded as EA Redwood Shores in 1998.
Defunct
- Original HQ in San MateoSan Mateo, CaliforniaSan Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of approximately 100,000 , it is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the east, Belmont to the south,...
, California, moved to Redwood City in 1998. - Origin SystemsOrigin SystemsOrigin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...
in AustinAustin, TexasAustin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Texas founded in 1983, acquired in 1992, closed in 2004. - Bullfrog ProductionsBullfrog ProductionsBullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. The company achieved recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous....
in Surrey, England, founded in 1987, acquired in 1995, merged with EA UK and effectively closed in 2001. - Black Box Games in VancouverVancouverVancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia, founded in January 1983, acquired June 2002 merged with EA Canada. - EA Baltimore in BaltimoreBaltimoreBaltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland, established in 1996 as part of Origin, closed in 2000 - EA Seattle in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1982 as Manley & Associates, acquired January 29, 1996, closed in 2002
- Maxis in Walnut CreekWalnut Creek, CaliforniaWalnut Creek is an incorporated city located east of the city of Oakland. It lies in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. While not as large as neighboring Concord, Walnut Creek serves as the business and entertainment hub for the neighboring cities within central Contra Costa...
, California, founded in 1987, acquired in June 1997, folded into Redwood Shores in 2004 - Westwood StudiosWestwood StudiosWestwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...
in Las VegasLas Vegas, NevadaLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, Nevada, founded in 1987, acquired from Virgin Interactive Entertainment in August 1998, merged into EA Los Angeles in 2003. - EA Pacific (known for a time as Westwood Pacific) in IrvineIrvine, CaliforniaIrvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, California, formerly part of Virgin Interactive, acquired with Westwood in 1998, closed in 2003 - KesmaiKesmaiKesmai was a pioneering game developer and online game publisher, founded in 1981 by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. The company was best known for the combat flight sim Air Warrior on the GEnie online service, one of the first graphical MMOGs, launched in 1987...
(known also as GameStorm), founded in 1981, acquired in 1999, closed in 2001. - DICE Canada in London, OntarioLondon, OntarioLondon is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...
, started in 1998, acquired DICE fully October 2, 2006; closed DICE Canada studio hours later. - EA Japan in Tokyo, Japan, closed due to consolidation; moved under EA Partners model
- EA UK in Chertsey, United KingdomChertseyChertsey is a town in Surrey, England, on the River Thames and its tributary rivers such as the River Bourne. It can be accessed by road from junction 11 of the M25 London orbital motorway. It shares borders with Staines, Laleham, Shepperton, Addlestone, Woking, Thorpe and Egham...
, moved to EA UK in Guildford - EA Chicago in Hoffman Estates, IllinoisHoffman Estates, IllinoisHoffman Estates is a northwestern suburb of Chicago in Illinois. The village is located primarily in Cook County with a small section in Kane County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 49,495 and estimated to be 52,520 in 2003...
, founded in 1990 as NuFXNuFXNuFX was a video game developer, headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. NuFX is famous for developing the NBA Street video game series. They were acquired by Electronic Arts on February 13, 2004. Their name was changed to EA Chicago...
, acquired in 2004, closed November 6, 2007. - Pandemic StudiosPandemic StudiosPandemic Studios was founded as an independent developer in 1998, it became an Electronic Arts-owned developer from 2007 to 2009, when it was officially closed. It was an Australian and American video game developer with offices in Brisbane, Australia and Los Angeles, California...
in Los Angeles, California and BrisbaneBrisbaneBrisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Queensland, Australia, founded in 1998, acquired October 2007 from Elevation PartnersElevation PartnersElevation Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The firm has $1.9 billion of assets under management....
, closed November 17, 2009.
EA Partners Program
The EA Partners co-publishingVideo game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
arm is dedicated to publishing and distributing games developed by third-party developers. Notable publishing/distribution agreements include:
- APB – Realtime WorldsRealtime WorldsRealtime Worlds Ltd was a video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland from 2002 until its closure in September 2010. Realtime Worlds was the largest independent game developer in Scotland with over 200 employees as well as a small Boulder, Colorado office....
- BulletstormBulletstormBulletstorm is a first-person shooter video game developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games, and is published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows...
– Epic GamesEpic GamesEpic Games, Inc., also known as Epic and formerly Epic MegaGames, is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina. Its most recent success has been the Gears of War series of games, although it is also known for its Unreal Engine technology. It is the parent company of... - Crysis seriesCrysis (series)Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game series developed by German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. The series revolves around a group of military protagonists with "nanosuits," technologically advanced suits of armor that allow them to gain enhanced physical...
– CrytekCrytekCrytek is a German video game company founded in 1999 by three Turkish brothers: Cevat, Avni and Faruk Yerli. Crytek's main headquarters are in Frankfurt, Germany, with five other studios in Kiev, Budapest, Nottingham, Sofia and Seoul. The company is best known for developing the game Far Cry and... - DeathSpankDeathSpankDeathSpank, , is a comedy action role-playing game by game designer Ron Gilbert. It was developed by Hothead Games and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on July 13, 2010 on the PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Network and on July 14, 2010 on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade...
– Hothead GamesHothead GamesHothead Games is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Hothead is best known for its role-playing/adventure video game series, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, based on the Penny Arcade webcomic... - Hellgate: LondonHellgate: LondonHellgate: London is a dark fantasy themed action role-playing game originally developed by Flagship Studios, released on October 31, 2007. It was developed by a team headed by former Blizzard Entertainment employees, some of whom had overseen the creation of the Diablo series...
– Flagship StudiosFlagship StudiosFlagship Studios was a computer game company founded by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik, the original developers of Diablo and former high level Blizzard North executives... - Kingdoms of Amalur: ReckoningKingdoms of Amalur: ReckoningKingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an upcoming single-player role-playing video game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. Ken Rolston, the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, acts as the game's executive designer. Additionally, noted...
– 38 Studios, Big Huge GamesBig Huge GamesBig Huge Games is a video game developer located in Timonium, Maryland. The company was founded in February 2000 by four veteran game industry developers: Tim Train, David Inscore, Jason Coleman and Brian Reynolds... - Left 4 Dead seriesLeft 4 Dead (series)The Left 4 Dead franchise is based on a series of cooperative first-person shooter, survival horror video games developed by the Valve Corporation...
, The Orange BoxThe Orange BoxThe Orange Box is a video game compilation for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, Mac OS X and PlayStation 3. The Windows and Xbox 360 versions were produced and published by Valve Corporation and released on October 10, 2007 as a boxed retail copy...
, Portal 2Portal 2Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The sequel to the 2007 video game Portal, it was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game...
(retail release) – ValveValve CorporationValve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States... - OverstrikeOverstrike (video game)Overstrike is an upcoming, four-player cooperative action video game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Electronic Arts in 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game's development was announced on May 25, 2010 by Ted Price, with the game then officially being revealed at E3 2011 on...
– Insomniac GamesInsomniac GamesInsomniac Games, Inc. is an American video game developer headquartered in Burbank, California. Founded in 1994, Insomniac has released titles for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. It created Disruptor, the first three Spyro the Dragon games, and the Ratchet &...
– the long-term third party developer for Sony is working on a multiplatform game to be published by EA. - Rock Band seriesRock BandRock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
– HarmonixHarmonix Music SystemsHarmonix Music Systems is an American video game development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States...
and MTV Games - The Secret World – FuncomFuncomFuncom Productions A/S is a Norwegian video game developer specializing in online games. It is best known for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game titles Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and its The Longest Journey series of adventure games...
- Shadows of the DamnedShadows of the DamnedShadows of the Damned, officially abbreviated as Damned or DMD, is a 2011 third-person shooter video game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles. The game follows the story of Garcia Hotspur, a Mexican demon...
– Grasshopper ManufactureGrasshopper ManufactureGrasshopper Manufacture, Inc. is a Japanese video game development house founded on March 30, 1998 in Suginami, Japan. Grasshopper gained mainstream attention in 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 game Killer7... - ShankShank (video game)Shank is a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on August 24, 2010 for the PlayStation 3, August 25, 2010 for the Xbox 360 and October 26, 2010 on for Microsoft Windows. The game features both melee and ranged combat, as...
– Klei EntertainmentKlei EntertainmentKlei Entertainment is an independent game development studio located in Vancouver that develops downloadable video games for the PC and Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade. Klei was formed in July 2005 by Jamie Cheng. They are best known for two of their original intellectual property games, Eets and... - Unconfirmed project – Respawn Entertainment – founded in April 2010, formed a partnership with ex Infinity WardInfinity WardInfinity Ward is an American video game developer. Infinity Ward is responsible for the development of the video game Call of Duty and four other installments in the Call of Duty franchise....
bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella.
Studio acquisition and management practices
During its period of fastest growth, EA was often criticized for buying smaller development studios primarily for their intellectual property assets, and then producing drastically changed games of their franchises. For example, OriginOrigin Systems
Origin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...
-produced Ultima VIII: Pagan
Ultima VIII
Ultima VIII: Pagan is a video game, the eighth part of the computer role-playing game series Ultima. It was not as well-received as its predecessors, Ultima VII and Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle...
and Ultima IX: Ascension
Ultima IX
Ultima IX: Ascension is the ninth and final part of the main series of the computer role-playing game series Ultima.Following the Avatar's escape from Pagan, he is transported back to Britannia for one final battle with the Guardian, who is increasingly ruining the physical and moral fabric of...
were developed quickly under EA's ownership, over the protests of Ultima creator Richard Garriott
Richard Garriott
Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa...
, and these two are widely considered to be subpar compared to the rest of the series.
In early 2008, current CEO John Riccitiello acknowledged that this practice by EA was wrong and that the company now gives acquired studios greater autonomy without "meddling" in their corporate culture.
In 2008, John D. Carmack of id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
said that EA is no longer the "Evil Empire" and decided to go with EA Partners, despite having a poor opinion of the publisher's past record.
"I'll admit that, if you asked me years ago, I still had thoughts that EA was the Evil Empire, the company that crushes the small studios...I'd have been surprised, if you told me a year ago that we'd end up with EA as a publisher. When we went out and talked to people, especially EA Partners people like ValveLike other EA Partners, such as Harmonix/MTV Games, Carmack stressed that EA Partners deal "isn't really a publishing arrangement. Instead, they really offer a menu of services—Valve takes one set of things, CrytekValve CorporationValve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
, we got almost uniformly positive responses from them."
Crytek
Crytek is a German video game company founded in 1999 by three Turkish brothers: Cevat, Avni and Faruk Yerli. Crytek's main headquarters are in Frankfurt, Germany, with five other studios in Kiev, Budapest, Nottingham, Sofia and Seoul. The company is best known for developing the game Far Cry and...
takes a different set, and we're probably taking a third set".
EA was criticized for shutting down some of its acquired studios after they released poorly performing games (for instance, Origin). Though, in some of the cases, the shutdown was merely a reformation of teams working at different small studios into a single studio. The historical pattern of poor sales and ratings of the first game shipped after acquisition suggests EA's control and direction as being primarily responsible for the game's failure rather than the studio. In the past, Magic Carpet 2
Magic Carpet 2
Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds is a 1995 computer game, the sequel to the Magic Carpet. It was developed by Bullfrog and published by Electronic Arts .-Story:...
was rushed to completion over the objections of designer Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux
Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,...
and it shipped during the holiday season with several major bugs. Studios such as Origin and Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. The company achieved recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous....
had previously produced games attracting significant fanbases. Many fans also became annoyed that their favorite developers were closed down, but some developers, for example the EALA studio, have stated that they try to carry on the legacy of the old studio (Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...
). Once EA received criticism from labor groups for its dismissals of large groups of employees during the closure of a studio. However, later, it was confirmed that layoffs were not heavily confined to one team or another, countering early rumors that the teams were specifically targeted—countering the implication that the under performance of certain games might have been the catalyst.
EA was once criticized for the acquisition of 19.9 percent of shares of its competitor Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
, a move that many felt would lead to a hostile takeover but has not yet materialized. However, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot later indicated that a merger with EA was a possibility. "The first option for us is to manage our own company and grow it. The second option is to work with the movie industry, and the third is to merge," he said. However in July 2010, EA elected to sell its reduced 15 percent share in Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
That share equated to roughly .
EA was criticized in the media for its attempted hostile takeover of Take Two Interactive.
Treatment of employees
In 2004, Electronic Arts was criticized for employees working extraordinarily long hours—up to 100 hours per week—and not just at "crunch" times leading up to the scheduled releases of products. The publication of the EA SpouseEA Spouse
EA Spouse is the name commonly used to refer to a blog post originally made on November 11, 2004 to LiveJournal that sharply criticized the labor practices of Electronic Arts...
blog, with criticisms such as "The current mandatory hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30 p.m.)". The company has since settled a class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
lawsuit brought by game artist
Game artist
A game artist is an artist who creates art for one or more types of games. Game artists are responsible for all of the aspects of game development that call for visual art...
s to compensate for unpaid overtime. The class was awarded . As a result, many of the lower-level developers (artists, programmers, producers, and designers) are now working at an hourly rate. A similar suit brought by programmers
Game programmer
A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebase for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer"...
was settled for .
Since these criticisms first aired, it's been reported that EA has taken steps to positively address work-life balance concerns by focusing on long-term project planning, compensation, and communication with employees. These efforts accelerated with the arrival of John Riccitiello
John Riccitiello
John Riccitiello is the CEO of Electronic Arts .He received his Bachelors of Science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley....
as CEO in February 2007. In December 2007, an internal EA employee survey showed a 13% increase in employee morale and a 21% jump in management recognition over a three year period.
In May 2008, 'EA_Spouse' blog author Erin Hoffman, speaking to videogame industry news site Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
, stated that EA had made significant progress, but may now be falling into old patterns again. Hoffman said that "I think EA is tremendously reformed, having made some real strong efforts to get the right people into their human resources department," and "I've been hearing from people who have gotten overtime pay there and I think that makes a great deal of difference. In fact, I've actually recommended to a few people I know to apply for jobs there," but also claims that she's begun to hear "horror stories" once again.
Game quality
For 2006, the games review aggregation site MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gives the average of EA games as 72.0 (out of 100); 2.5 points behind Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
(74.5) but ahead of the other first-party publishers Microsoft (71.6) and Sony (71.2). The closest third-party publisher is Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is a major American publisher, developer, and distributor of video games and video game peripherals. Take-Two wholly owns 2K Games and Rockstar Games. The company's headquarters are in New York City, with international headquarters in Windsor, United Kingdom...
(publishing as 2K Games and Rockstar Games) at 70.3. The remaining top 10 publishers (Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
, Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
, THQ
THQ
THQ Inc. is an American developer and publisher of video games. Founded in 1989 in the United States, the company develops products for video game consoles, handheld game systems, as well as for personal computers and wireless devices...
, Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
, Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
) all rate in the mid 60s. Since 2005 EA has published five games, Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2 is a computer game by the Swedish developer Digital Illusions CE . During development, Trauma Studios contributed to the development of the game after it was acquired by DICE...
, Crysis
Crysis
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek , published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, and released in November 2007. It is the first game of a trilogy. A separate game entitled Crysis Warhead was released on September 12, 2008, and follows similar...
, Rock Band, Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2 is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on January 26, 2010 and for PlayStation 3 on January 18, 2011...
, and Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age: Origins is a single-player role-playing video game developed by BioWare's Edmonton studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise...
that received Universal Acclaim (Metacritic score 90 or greater).
EA's aggregate review performance had shown a downward trend in quality over recent years and was expected to affect market shares during competitive seasons. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson had said, "Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand. According to our ongoing survey of GameRankings.com aggregated review data, Electronic Arts' overall game quality continues to fall...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 had also received criticism for developing games that lack innovation vis-à-vis the number of gaming titles produced under the EA brand that show a history of yearly updates, particularly in their sporting franchises. These typically retail as new games at full market price and feature only updated team rosters in addition to incremental changes to game mechanics, the user interface, and graphics. One critique compared EA to companies like Ubisoft and concluded that EA's innovation in new and old IPs "Crawls along at a snail's pace," while even the company's own CEO, John Riccitiello, acknowledged the lack of innovation seen in the industry generally, saying, "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play. For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat. There's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before." EA has announced that it is turning its attention to creating new game IPs in order to stem this trend, with recently acquired and critically acclaimed studios BioWare and Pandemic would be contributing to this process.
Anti-trust lawsuit
On June 5, 2008, a lawsuit was filed in OaklandOakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, California alleging Electronic Arts is breaking United States anti-trust laws by signing exclusive contracts with the NFL Players Association, the NCAA and Arena Football League, to use players' names, likenesses and team logos. This keeps other companies from being able to sign the same agreements. The suit further accuses EA of raising the price of games associated with these licenses as a result of this action. However, in an interview with GameTap, Peter Moore claims it was the NFL that sought the deal. "To be clear, the NFL was the entity that wanted the exclusive relationship. EA bid, as did a number of other companies, for the exclusive relationship," Moore explained. "It wasn't on our behest that this went exclusive... We bid and we were very fortunate and lucky and delighted to be the winning licensee." More recently, EA has been sued by former NCAA players for allegedly using their images without compensation.
EULA agreements and DRM
In the September 2008 release of EA's game SporeSpore (2008 video game)
Spore is a multi-genre single-player god game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game was released for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems in September 2008 as Spore...
it was revealed that the DRM
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
scheme included a program called SecuROM
SecuROM
SecuROM is a CD/DVD copy protection and digital rights management product developed by Sony DADC. SecuROM aims to resist home media duplication devices, professional duplicators, and attempts at reverse engineering software. It is most often used for commercial computer games running under the...
and a lifetime machine-activation limit of three (3) instances. A huge public outcry over this DRM scheme broke out over the Internet and swarmed Amazon.com with one-star ratings and critical reviews of the game in order to get EA to "pay attention to their consumers". This DRM scheme, which was intended to hinder the efforts of pirates to illegally use and distribute EA software, instead mainly affected paying customers, as the game itself was pirated well before release. On September 13, 2008, it was announced that Spore was the most pirated game ever with over half a million illegal downloads within the first week of release. In response to customer reaction, EA officially announced its release of upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is a 2008 real-time strategy video game developed by EA Los Angeles and published by Electronic Arts. Announced on February 14, 2008, it was released on October 28, 2008 in the United States for Microsoft Windows-based PCs and three days later in Europe. A version for...
would increase the installation limit to 5 rather than 3. Many customers were still unsatisfied, claiming they were still renting the game at full price.
On September 22, 2008, a global class action law suit was filed against EA regarding the DRM in Spore, complaining about EA not disclosing the existence of SecuROM from the game manual, and addresses how SecuROM runs with the nature of a rootkit
Rootkit
A rootkit is software that enables continued privileged access to a computer while actively hiding its presence from administrators by subverting standard operating system functionality or other applications...
, including how it remains on the hard drive even after Spore is uninstalled. On October 14, 2008, a similar class action lawsuit was filed against EA for the inclusion of DRM software in the free demo version of the Creature Creator.
On March 31, 2009, EA released a "De-Authorization Management Tool" that allows customers who have installed games containing the SecuROM activation scheme to "de-authorize" a computer, freeing up one of the five machine "slots" to be used on another machine.
On June 24, 2009, EA announced and formalized a change in its approach to preventing piracy of PC games. The company plans to drop all DRM from its games, replacing it with a traditional CD-key check. However, games will include content that is not present on the disc, requiring a download during the activation of the game. The intent is to create an incentive to buy a legitimate copy of the game. A general policy has been laid out with plans envisioning games more as services with a lot of content to freely download or buy linked to the game, some goodies and regular updates as a way to coax players to use the genuine copies of EA games.
Sexism and ageism in advertising
EA's advertising campaign for Dead Space 2Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the sequel to Dead Space. Unlike its predecessor, Dead Space 2 has a multiplayer mode. A Collector's Edition is...
was decried as sexist and ageist, with gamers claiming that it reinforcing out-dated stereotypes against female and older gamers. The game is rated M for Mature, and is therefore only recommended for players over the age of seventeen. Others thought the advertisements were pointless and would hurt market share. "The video game's campaign hinges on a unique premise – one that ignores how much the culture of gaming has changed." As of 2010, 40% of console-only gamers were women and the average game player was 34 years old.
For the advertising campaign, 200 women were selected for their conservative values and lack of familiarity with video games. Their reactions to a screening of the game were featured in EA's web and TV advertisements with the campaign slogan "Your mom hates Dead Space 2."
On February 24, 2011, the Extra Credits team of The Escapist published 'An Open Letter to EA Marketing' in their weekly video column, denouncing Electronic Arts' marketing decisions for the Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno (video game)
Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also released on the PlayStation Portable and was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement...
, Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor (series)
Medal of Honor is the name of a series of first-person shooter games set in World War II, with an October 2010 reboot based on the conflicts of present day Afghanistan. The first game was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for the PlayStation game console...
and Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2
Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the sequel to Dead Space. Unlike its predecessor, Dead Space 2 has a multiplayer mode. A Collector's Edition is...
releases. They argue that EA's decisions to hire fake protesters and market games solely on shock value, while neglecting to defend the Medal of Honor on a 1st Amendment basis for letting the player play as the Taliban, have been hurtful to the gaming industry. They also argue that the advertisements are counterproductive to Electronic Arts' wishes to elevate games to an art medium as demonstrated in the 1980s Electronic Arts ad 'Can a Computer Make You Cry?'.
Notable games published
Some of the most notable and popular games of video game history have been published by EA, and many of these are listed below. Though EA published these titles, they did not always develop them; some were developed by independent game development studios. EA developed their first game in 1987.- Pinball Construction SetPinball Construction SetPinball Construction Set is a computer game by Bill Budge published by Electronic Arts. It was released for the Apple II and Atari 800 in 1983 and was later ported to other platforms, such as the Commodore 64 and DOS .-Description:...
(1983) by Bill BudgeBill BudgeBill Budge is a computer game programmer and designer. His two main claims to fame are 1981's Raster Blaster and 1983's Pinball Construction Set. Both these games were released originally for the Apple II.... - ArchonArchon (computer game)Archon: The Light and the Dark is a computer game developed by Free Fall Associates and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was originally developed for Atari 8-bit computers in 1983, but was later ported to several other systems of the day, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX...
(1983) and Archon II: AdeptArchon II: AdeptArchon II: Adept is a 1984 computer game developed by Jon Freeman, Paul Reiche III and Anne Westfall, and distributed by Electronic Arts for various platforms....
(1984) by Free Fall AssociatesFree Fall AssociatesFree Fall Associates was a computer game developer of the 1980s and early 1990s. It was founded in 1981 by Jon Freeman, his wife, game programmer Anne Westfall, and game designer Paul Reiche III... - M.U.L.E.M.U.L.E.M.U.L.E. is a seminal multiplayer video game by Ozark Softscape. It was published in 1983 by Electronic Arts. It was originally written for the Atari 400/800, and was later ported to the Commodore 64, the Nintendo Entertainment System and the IBM PC Jr. Japanese versions also exist for the...
(1983) by Dan Bunten and Ozark SoftscapeOzark SoftscapeOzark Softscape was a computer game programming team consisting initially of Dan Bunten, Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson.-History:The company was based out of Little Rock, Arkansas and had profound success with a few of their early titles... - One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry BirdOne on One: Dr. J vs. Larry BirdDr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One, more commonly known as One on One, is a 1983 computer basketball game for the early era of home computers...
(1983) by Eric Hammond - Music Construction SetMusic Construction SetMusic Construction Set is a music composition notation program. It was originally developed in 1984 for the Apple II, and quickly ported to other systems of the era. It was designed and developed by Will Harvey and published by Electronic Arts...
(1984) by Will HarveyWill HarveyWill Harvey is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who, at the age of 15, achieved fame for writing Music Construction Set, the first commercial sheet music processor for home computers... - The Seven Cities of GoldThe Seven Cities of Gold (game)The Seven Cities of Gold is an adventure game created by Dan Bunten and published by Electronic Arts in 1984. The player takes the role of a late-15th century explorer for Spain, setting sail to the New World in order to explore the map and interact with the natives in order to win gold and please...
(1984) by Dan Bunten and Ozark SoftscapeOzark SoftscapeOzark Softscape was a computer game programming team consisting initially of Dan Bunten, Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson.-History:The company was based out of Little Rock, Arkansas and had profound success with a few of their early titles... - The Bard's TaleBard's Tale (1985)The Bard's Tale is a fantasy role-playing video game created by Interplay Productions in and distributed by Electronic Arts...
(1985) by Interplay ProductionsInterplay EntertainmentInterplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed... - Mail Order MonstersMail Order MonstersMail Order Monsters is a 1985 computer game created by Paul Reiche III, Evan Robinson and Nicky Robinson and published by Electronic Arts for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit family home computers....
(1985) by Paul Reiche IIIPaul Reiche IIIPaul Reiche III is a game designer, particularly for computer games. Reiche is best known for being the co-creator, together with Fred Ford, of the Star Control universe.-Pen and paper RPGs:...
, Evan Robinson and Nicky RobinsonNicky Robinson (game programmer)Nicky Robinson is a computer game programmer, one of the earliest women to enter the field. Her career spans over twenty years, and extends back into the classic gaming era with such recognized titles as Star Control and Mail Order Monsters, on which she worked with Evan Robinson and renowned game... - Racing Destruction SetRacing Destruction SetRacing Destruction Set is a car racing and motocross computer game that was published in 1985 by Electronic Arts. It was developed for the Commodore 64 computer system, and was advertised as being Commodore 128 compatible...
(1985) by Rick Koenig - Instant MusicInstant Music (software)Instant Music is an interactive music software program released by Electronic Arts in 1986. It was developed first for the Amiga, but then ported to other platforms, such as Apple IIGS, and Commodore 64....
(1986) by Robert CampbellRobert Campbell-Politicians:*Robert Campbell , Australian merchant/politician from New South Wales*Robert Campbell , New South Wales politician, son of the above*Robert Campbell , New York politician... - StarflightStarflightStarflight is a computer game published by Electronic Arts and developed by Binary Systems in 1986. Originally developed for DOS and Tandy, it was later released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh and Commodore 64...
(1986) by Binary Systems - Skate or Die!Skate or Die!Not to be confused with the Law & Order episode "Skate or Die"Skate or Die! is a skateboarding game released by Electronic Arts in 1987 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Apple IIgs, Amstrad CPC, and IBM Compatibles running MS-DOS. It was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment...
(1987), EA's first internally-developed title - Zany GolfZany GolfZany Golf, also known as Will Harvey's Zany Golf, is a video game with a fantasy take on miniature golf, developed by Sandcastle Productions and published by Electronic Arts. The game was originally developed in 1988 for the Apple IIGS and became the first Apple IIGS game to attract the mainstream...
(1988), by Sandcastle Productions (Will Harvey) - PopulousPopulous-External links:*...
(1989) by BullfrogBullfrog ProductionsBullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. The company achieved recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous....
which EA acquired in 1995 - The Immortal (1990) by Sandcastle Productions (Will Harvey)
- Desert Strike: Return to the GulfDesert Strike: Return to the GulfDesert Strike: Return to the Gulf, commonly known as Desert Strike, is a shoot 'em up video game released by Electronic Arts in February 1992 for Sega's Mega Drive. The game was later released on several other formats, including a much upgraded version for the Amiga home computer...
(1992) by EA's High Score Production group - NHLNHL seriesNHL is a series of professional ice hockey simulation video games developed by EA Canada and published yearly by Electronic Arts under the EA Sports brand...
series (1991–) - Wing CommanderWing Commander (franchise)Wing Commander is a video game media franchise consisting of space combat simulation computer games from Origin Systems, Inc., an animated television series, a feature film, a collectible card game, a series of novels, and action figures...
series (1992 onwards, previous games published in-house) - FIFA series (1993–)
- Need for Speed series (1994–) (first installment was made by EA in collaboration with Road & TrackRoad & TrackRoad & Track is an American automotive enthusiast magazine. It is owned by Hearst Magazines, and is published monthly. The editorial offices are located in Newport Beach, California.-History:...
) - Ultima OnlineUltima OnlineUltima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
(1997) by Origin SystemsOrigin SystemsOrigin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004... - NASCAR seriesNASCAR seriesThe EA Sports NASCAR series was a series of NASCAR video games published by EA Sports. The series began with NASCAR 98 and NASCAR 99 in 1997 and 1998. EA Sports released NASCAR Thunder 2002 in 2001, and ever since then, Jeff Gordon , Dale Earnhardt, Jr. ,and Tony Stewart were on the cover...
(1997–2009) - Command & ConquerCommand & ConquerCommand & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...
series (titles from 1999–present) by Westwood StudiosWestwood StudiosWestwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...
(earlier titles released by Virgin InteractiveVirgin InteractiveVirgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...
) - Dungeon KeeperDungeon KeeperDungeon Keeper is a strategy video game released developed by Bullfrog Productions under Peter Molyneux and released by Electronic Arts in July 1997 for the PC in which the player attempts to build and manage a dungeon or lair while protecting it from 'hero' characters intent on stealing the...
series by Bullfrog ProductionsBullfrog ProductionsBullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. The company achieved recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous.... - SimCitySimCitySimCity is a critically acclaimed city-building simulation video game, first released in 1989, and designed by Will Wright. SimCity was Maxis' first product, which has since been ported into various personal computers and game consoles, and spawned several sequels including SimCity 2000 in 1994,...
series (titles from 1999–) by Maxis (earlier titles released by other publishers) - Medal of HonorMedal of Honor (series)Medal of Honor is the name of a series of first-person shooter games set in World War II, with an October 2010 reboot based on the conflicts of present day Afghanistan. The first game was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for the PlayStation game console...
series (1999–) - System Shock 2System Shock 2System Shock 2 is a 1999 first-person action role-playing video game, designed by Ken Levine for Microsoft Windows. The title is a sequel to the 1994 PC game System Shock, and was co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios...
(1999) - American McGee's AliceAmerican McGee's AliceAmerican McGee's Alice is a third-person action game released for PC on October 6, 2000. The game, developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts, is set in an alternative universe of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
(2000) - SSX seriesSSX (series)SSX is a series of snowboarding and skiing videogames published by EA Sports BIG. It is an arcade-style racing game with larger-than-life courses, characters, and tricks...
(2000–) - James BondJames Bond gamesThe James Bond video game franchise is a series of shooter games and other genres developed and published by a variety of companies...
series (1999–2005) - Harry Potter series (2001–2011)
- The SimsThe SimsThe Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
(2000–2003) by Maxis - The Sims 2The Sims 2The Sims 2 is a strategic life simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims, which debuted on February 4, 2000. It was first released on September 14, 2004 for Microsoft Windows. A port to Apple Mac OS X...
(2004–2008) by Maxis (and later The Sims StudioThe Sims StudioThe Sims Studio is a division under Electronic Arts's EA Play label. The studio is responsible for the production and expansion of the popular game franchises The Sims and future SimCity titles.-History:...
) - The Sims StoriesThe Sims StoriesThe Sims Stories is a series of computer games in The Sims series. They are optimized for play on laptops and some slower computers, due to their lower system requirements than original The Sims 2, but can still be played on desktop computers...
series (2007–2008) by Aspyr and EA - The Sims 3The Sims 3The Sims 3 is a 2009 strategic life simulation computer game developed by The Sims Studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims 2. It was first released on June 2, 2009 simultaneously for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows...
(2009–present) by Visceral GamesVisceral GamesVisceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:...
and The Sims StudioThe Sims StudioThe Sims Studio is a division under Electronic Arts's EA Play label. The studio is responsible for the production and expansion of the popular game franchises The Sims and future SimCity titles.-History:... - BurnoutBurnout (series)Burnout is a series of high-speed racing games for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo GameCube game consoles. Also, for the very first time, a PC version of the latest installment in the series, Burnout Paradise, has been released...
series (2004–present) - Battlefield series (2002–present) by EA Digital Illusions CE
- Madden NFL series (1989–present)
- NCAA Football seriesNCAA Football seriesNCAA Football is a football video game series in which you play as any current Division I FBS college team. This game is developed by EA Sports. Because of NCAA rules, current college players are not permitted to be used as the cover athletes...
(1993–present) - Dark Age of CamelotDark Age of CamelotDark Age of Camelot is a 3D medieval fantasy MMORPG, released on October 10 2001 in North America and in Europe shortly after through it's partner GOA. It is still running today recently celebrating its 10th anniversary....
(republished after EA acquired Mythic in 2005) - CrysisCrysis (series)Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game series developed by German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. The series revolves around a group of military protagonists with "nanosuits," technologically advanced suits of armor that allow them to gain enhanced physical...
series (2007–) by CrytekCrytekCrytek is a German video game company founded in 1999 by three Turkish brothers: Cevat, Avni and Faruk Yerli. Crytek's main headquarters are in Frankfurt, Germany, with five other studios in Kiev, Budapest, Nottingham, Sofia and Seoul. The company is best known for developing the game Far Cry and... - Rock Band series (2007–) by Harmonix
- SkateSkate (video game)Skate is a skateboarding video game developed by EA Black Box for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was released in North America on September 17, 2007 for the Xbox 360 and September 24, 2007 for the PlayStation 3 and in Europe on September 28, 2007 for the Xbox 360 and October 5, 2007 for the...
series (2007–) by EA Black Box - Mass EffectMass Effect (series)Mass Effect is an award-winning, bestselling series of science fiction RPG third-person shooter video games developed by the Canadian company BioWare and released for the Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows and, from the second installment, for the PlayStation 3...
series (starting with Mass Effect 2Mass Effect 2Mass Effect 2 is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on January 26, 2010 and for PlayStation 3 on January 18, 2011...
, the first gameMass EffectMass Effect is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows by Demiurge Studios. The Xbox 360 version was released worldwide in November 2007 published by Microsoft Game Studios...
was published by Microsoft)(2009–) by BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts... - Warhammer Online: Age of ReckoningWarhammer Online: Age of ReckoningWarhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting. It was developed by Mythic Entertainment and simultaneously released in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand on September 18, 2008...
(2008) by Mythic EntertainmentMythic EntertainmentBioWare Mythic is a computer game developer in Fairfax, Virginia which is most widely recognized for developing the 2001 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot... - SporeSpore (2008 video game)Spore is a multi-genre single-player god game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game was released for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems in September 2008 as Spore...
series (2008–) by Maxis - Army of Two series (2008–) by EA MontrealEA MontrealEA Montreal is a video game development studio owned and operated by Electronic Arts. The studio is based in Montréal, Québec. It was inaugurated by EA on March 17, 2004. The studio was founded by Alain Tascan a former Ubisoft and BAM! Entertainment executive. It is one of a few examples where EA...
- Dead SpaceDead Space (series)Dead Space is a media franchise created by Glen Schofield, developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise centers on a series of video games of the survival horror and third-person shooter genres, and also includes two motion pictures and a comic book series, with more...
series (2008–) by Visceral GamesVisceral GamesVisceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:... - Mirror's EdgeMirror's EdgeMirror's Edge is a single-player first person action-adventure video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was announced on July 10, 2007, and was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2008. A Microsoft Windows version was released...
(2008) by EA Digital Illusions CE - Dragon AgeDragon AgeDragon Age: Origins is a single-player role-playing video game developed by BioWare's Edmonton studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise...
series (2009–) by BioWareBioWareBioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts... - Dante's InfernoDante's Inferno (video game)Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also released on the PlayStation Portable and was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement...
(2010) by Visceral GamesVisceral GamesVisceral Games is a video game development studio internally owned by Electronic Arts. They are perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Dead Space series.-History:...
Electronic Arts also published a number of non-game titles. The most popular of these was closely related to the video game industry and was actually used by several of their developers. Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint is a bitmap graphics editor series originally created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts .The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985...
premiered on the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
in 1985 and was later ported to other systems. The last version in the line, Deluxe Paint V, was released in 1994. Other non-game titles include Music Construction Set
Music Construction Set
Music Construction Set is a music composition notation program. It was originally developed in 1984 for the Apple II, and quickly ported to other systems of the era. It was designed and developed by Will Harvey and published by Electronic Arts...
(and Deluxe Music Construction Set
Deluxe Music Construction Set
Deluxe Music Construction Set is a 1986 music composition, notation and playback program for the Amiga and Apple Macintosh home computers.-Summary:...
), Deluxe Paint Animation
Deluxe Paint Animation
Deluxe Paint Animation is a graphics editor and animation creation package that is an MS-DOS adaptation by Brent Iverson of Deluxe Paint, with additional animation features by Steve Shaw, released by Electronic Arts.-Features:...
and Instant Music
Instant Music (software)
Instant Music is an interactive music software program released by Electronic Arts in 1986. It was developed first for the Amiga, but then ported to other platforms, such as Apple IIGS, and Commodore 64....
.
EA also published a black and white animation tool called Studio/1, and a series of Paint titles on the Macintosh: Studio/8 and Studio/32 (1990).
2011 release
- Warhammer Online: Wrath of HeroesWarhammer Online: Age of ReckoningWarhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting. It was developed by Mythic Entertainment and simultaneously released in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand on September 18, 2008...
(Windows, Mac OS X) - Star Wars: The Old RepublicStar Wars: The Old RepublicStar Wars: The Old Republic, abbreviated as TOR or SWTOR, is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe. Currently in development by BioWare Austin and a supplemental team at BioWare Edmonton, the game was first announced on October 21, 2008, at an...
(Windows)
2012 release
- NFL BlitzNFL Blitz (2012 video game)NFL Blitz is a downloadable video game by EA Sports featuring the teams of the National Football League. It will be a reboot of the NFL Blitz series. It will be released on January 10, 2012 on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade for $15 USD ....
(PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade) - Kingdoms of Amalur: ReckoningKingdoms of Amalur: ReckoningKingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an upcoming single-player role-playing video game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. Ken Rolston, the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, acts as the game's executive designer. Additionally, noted...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows) – Developed by 38 Studios - SSXSSX (2012 video game)SSX is an upcoming snowboarding video game in the SSX series of video games from Electronic Arts. First revealed at the Spike Video Game Awards in 2010 under the working title SSX: Deadly Descents, the game's trailer appears to show a much darker direction to the series than previous entries, and...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) - SyndicateSyndicate (2012 video game)Syndicate is an upcoming video game by Starbreeze Studios set for release in February 2012 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 platforms...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows) – Developed by Starbreeze StudiosStarbreeze StudiosStarbreeze Studios is a video game development studio founded by members of the demo group Triton, based in Uppsala, Sweden.-History:The company was founded in 1998, under the name O3 Games. In 2000, O3 Games merged with the smaller company Starbreeze Studios which was then based in Härnösand, Sweden... - Mass Effect 3Mass Effect 3Mass Effect 3 is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows) - FIFA StreetFIFA Street (2012 video game)FIFA Street is a forthcoming game in EA Sports' FIFA Street franchise based on the sport of street football. It will be the first such game in almost four years, and a reboot for the series...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) - The Secret World (Xbox 360, Windows)
- OverstrikeOverstrike (video game)Overstrike is an upcoming, four-player cooperative action video game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Electronic Arts in 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game's development was announced on May 25, 2010 by Ted Price, with the game then officially being revealed at E3 2011 on...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) - Grand Slam Tennis 2Grand Slam Tennis 2Grand Slam Tennis 2 is an upcoming tennis video game, developed by EA Canada, and will be released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and are slated for release in 2012. It is a sequel to Grand Slam Tennis...
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) - Shank 2 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)
- Warp
Logos
The Electronic Arts logo has undergone few changes in the company's history. EA's classic Square/Circle/Triangle corporate logo, adopted shortly after its founding and phased out in 1999, was devised by Barry Deutsch of Steinhilber Deutsch and Gard design firm. The three shapes were meant to stand for the "basic alphabet of graphic design." The shapes were rasterized to connote technology. Many customers mistook the square/circle/triangle logo for a stylized "EOA." Though they thought the "E" stood for "Electronic" and "A" for "Arts", they had no idea what the "O" could stand for, except perhaps the o in "Electronic." An early newsletterNewsletter
A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...
of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle indeed stood for "E" and "A", but that the circle was merely "a Nerf
Nerf
Nerf is a toy brand created by Parker Brothers and currently owned by Hasbro. The acronym NERF stands for "Non-Expanding Recreational Foam". Most of the toys are a variety of foam-based weaponry, but there are also several different types of Nerf toys, such as balls for sports like football,...
ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been popping up on our splash screens ever since." Other customers saw the logo as a stylized "ECA". The circle may have been put in to separate the E and the A.
Nancy Fong and Bing Gordon came up with the idea to hide the three shapes on the cover of every game, borrowing the idea from the urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
s concerning the placement of the bunny symbols on the covers of Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
magazine. Finding the logo's hidden placement on early EA titles was a ritual for employees whenever a new cover was displayed outside Fong's cubicle. In December 1986 David Gardner and Mark Lewis moved to the UK to open a European headquarters. Up until that point publishing of Electronic Arts Games, and the conversion of many of their games to compact cassette versions in Europe was handled by Ariolasoft
Ariolasoft
Ariolasoft GmbH, later known as United Software, was a German computer game developer, publisher and distributor. It started as the software subsidiary of Ariola Records...
.
The current EA logo was derived from the logo used by sub-brand EA Sports
EA Sports
EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...
. It was first used, in a different form, in 1988, when Electronic Arts introduced the "EASN" brand (later changed to "EA Sports" due to legal difficulties with ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
). The logo was modified and adopted company-wide around 1999.
The in-game logo introduction has changed several times since the inception of Electronic Arts. In late-1990s to 2001, Originally an explosion sound effect accompanying the letters for "Electronic Arts" flying into formation, followed by an electronic voice. The sound effects have changed in certain games (sounds of the letters whipping past, for example). In 1999 to 2003, An outlined circle flips and forms the modern EA Games logo. Accompanied by a synthesized ping sound. In 2002 to 2004, EA Games logo appearing on screen, accompanied by a very loud voice saying "EA Games" followed by a whisper saying "challenge everything". In 2005, Silver EA logo appearing then fading away. *2006 to present: The logo is different with every game, taking on certain visual aspects of the game it is presented with. However the EA letters always remain the same and the logo always remains a circle.
The company's slogan has changed several times since the company's inception. Initially, it was "We see farther." – Founding tag line, then "EA Games, challenge everything.", then "EA Sports, it's in the game." – a shortened version of their original slogan "If it's in the game, it's in the game.". "EA Sports, it's in the game" is spoken by Andrew Anthony.
See also
- List of Electronic Arts games
- History of video gamesHistory of video gamesThe history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and...
Further reading
- "Player 4 Stage 4: But is it Arts?", a history of the early Electronic Arts
- Innovation: Does Size Matter? from GameSpot.com
- Original "EA_spouse" blog on workers of EA
- Aftermath of "EA_spouse" blog
- "Game makers see workplace changes" from News.com
- What's The 'Coolest Job Ever'? Electronic Arts' Summer Interns Tell Their Story
- Article on interning at EA on ITworld.com
- The EscapistThe Escapist (magazine)The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
Article on EA's relationship towards Origin :
External links
- Electronic Arts profile on MobyGamesMobyGames-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...
- EA Mobile profile on MobileGamesDB (Open mobile game database)