Task 2
In this piece of writing, I will be giving an overview of
EA, comparing games released to other companies within the genre such as Valve.
I will also overview the value of these companies, and issues affecting them as
a whole.
Battlefield 3 is one of EA’s biggest games, selling over 17
million copies worldwide. This severely lacks behind the dominant flagship,
which is Activation’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which has sold over 28
million copies.
Medal of Honour – Warfighter is another game EA has pushed
out in the recent quarter of this year selling only 1.21 million copies, which
if each copy sold for £39.99, is only an estimated £48
million profit (marginally less than the £678 million by Battlefield, and over
£1 billion made by Call of Duty MW3) [these predictions I worked out by the
average sale price of £39.99 multiplied by the estimated sales]. Bungie
released its king game with Halo 4 a few weeks after Medal of Honour was
released, and according to vgcharts has sold 4.55 million copies up to the 17th
of November. This is almost three times as much as Warfighter had sold.
On the other end of the gaming genres,
Fifa 13 produced by EA Sports has totalled 8.29 million sales worldwide,
selling less that Fifa 12 (12.25 million) to the current figures of vgcharts.
Although, Madden NFL 13 lacks far behind Fifa, with only 2.96 million copies
sold. Both these franchises though, lack behind the eclipsing shadow of might
that is Wii Sports by Nintendo, which has sold 79.65 million copies! On the
other hand, this has been released since 2006 and was included in many cases
for free with the Wii.
In the genre that is RPG, EA has its two
major franchises: Mass Effect and Dragon Age, both of which are renowned games.
Dragon Age Origin, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 all have sold over 4 million
copies each. The original World of Warcraft, produced by Blizzard, has sold
over 6 Million copies with a strong base of monthly subscribers. As well as
this, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King and Burning Crusade both have
sold 3 million copies.
EA
also has many dominating games in the broad action/adventure genre. One of
which is Dead Space 2, selling 2.7 million copies. To contrary this, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft
Auto: San Andreas has sold over 23 million copies, and in my opinion could be
said to be one of the most well-known games of our generation.
(Graph failed to upload)
This graph shows a comparison of company value, comparing EA
(blue) to THQ (dark blue), Activision Blizzard (red), Konami Corporation
(orange) and Microsoft Corporation (green), over a nine year time span. It
clearly shows how Activision is dominating the games market, most likely with
it’s releases of ever popular Call of Duty. The jagged shape of the line is most
likely due to the World of Warcraft monthly subscriptions. EA is averagely
above the other few companies, though drops mid-2008 to be on a similar level
with them.
There are many problems which have affected the development
of games in 2012. One of which is the
merge of Activision and Blizzard. The merge deal was $18.8Bn, with Blizzard
investing $2Bn and Activision $1Bn into the new company. This though, lead to
500 people from both companies losing their jobs, as they only needed a certain
amount of people for each job role. This could make later releases of Games
from Activision Blizzard less unique, as the individual companies have now
merged to produce games together. The individuals who specifically knew what
needed to be done to create a World of Warcraft or Call of Duty game could have
been lost, making the development of games slower and less productive.
Another issue is Data Rights Management. The basic aim of
DRM is to stop piracy, by checking if the serial is valid through an internet
connection – and if you don’t have connection to the internet, you can’t play
your game. This is the case with Command and Conquer 4. If you don’t have an
internet connection, a pop up screen displays that all progress will not be
saved. You can continue to play but no data will be saved, and when the
internet connection resumes, you will be booted back to the main menu. This is
all to stop piracy. It is incredibly disrespectful, in my opinion, to people
who have bought the games legitimately. This is a massive problem for
development, as it will put people off buying this game, and any others that
follow is the wake of this game by including this form of DRM.
Another issue is the release of downloadable content on the
first day of release for many big games. Mass Effect 3 is one of the main games
under scrutiny. Many people believe that, especially as it is already on the
disk they paid for, locking away DLC and releasing it on the first day is
wrong. This is because it is game data that could have been released as part of
the actual game, but the company simply wants more money or rushed to get the
game out and didn’t have time to properly patch the game. This is a problem for
development as again, it may put people off buying games. It has also created a
lot of contravery towards companies such as EA and Bioware.
Bibliography
http://www.battlefield.com/
(28/11/12)
http://www.ea.com/uk
(28/11/12)
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=fifa+13
(28/11/12)
