During the Electronic Arts third quarter earnings conference call yesterday, the games publisher announced that Crysis has gone platinum, but CEO John Riccitiello said that EA is "not satisfied" with the overall third quarter financial results.
That isn't to say there wasn't any success stories in the quarter, as Riccitiello said that Rock Band, Orange Box and Crysis all exceeded expectations.
However, EA was disappointed that none of the big successes were developed internally. "We did not have any internally developed breakaway titles," said Riccitiello. "The closest thing we had to breakaway titles in 2007 were Skate and FIFA," he continued.
He expects Burnout Paradise to be another big hit, but Riccitiello didn't give any more indications than that at this early stage in the game's shelf life.
CFO Warren Jensen hailed the success of new franchise, Skate, as it managed to outsell Tony Hawk's Proving Ground by two copies to one. This was even despite the fact the former only shipped on two platforms (X360, PS3), compared to the latter's five platforms (X360, PS3, PS2, Wii, DS).
EA also managed to hold onto its number one publisher status across all platforms, with a 19 percent share of the market in Europe and 18 percent in North America. "We are very pleased with our European results," said Riccitiello, "titles like FIFA, Need for Speed and The Simpsons all charted in the top 10 in Europe."
Despite the successes on the PC though, EA said that PC revenue was down by 30 percent compared to last year, but the company said that this was down to blockbuster franchises such as The Sims and Battlefield releasing new titles.
There's been a lot of talk about the state of PC gaming recently, especially after NPD's study which claimed only 14 percent of all retail sales were PC games, but that study neglected to take digitally distributed sales into account - a massive factor in the PC games industry these days. Our own Brett Thomas sounded off on this very topic earlier today, so check out his column.
In the meantime, discuss EA's bricks and bouquets of the last quarter in the usual place.
That isn't to say there wasn't any success stories in the quarter, as Riccitiello said that Rock Band, Orange Box and Crysis all exceeded expectations.
However, EA was disappointed that none of the big successes were developed internally. "We did not have any internally developed breakaway titles," said Riccitiello. "The closest thing we had to breakaway titles in 2007 were Skate and FIFA," he continued.
He expects Burnout Paradise to be another big hit, but Riccitiello didn't give any more indications than that at this early stage in the game's shelf life.
CFO Warren Jensen hailed the success of new franchise, Skate, as it managed to outsell Tony Hawk's Proving Ground by two copies to one. This was even despite the fact the former only shipped on two platforms (X360, PS3), compared to the latter's five platforms (X360, PS3, PS2, Wii, DS).
EA also managed to hold onto its number one publisher status across all platforms, with a 19 percent share of the market in Europe and 18 percent in North America. "We are very pleased with our European results," said Riccitiello, "titles like FIFA, Need for Speed and The Simpsons all charted in the top 10 in Europe."
Despite the successes on the PC though, EA said that PC revenue was down by 30 percent compared to last year, but the company said that this was down to blockbuster franchises such as The Sims and Battlefield releasing new titles.
There's been a lot of talk about the state of PC gaming recently, especially after NPD's study which claimed only 14 percent of all retail sales were PC games, but that study neglected to take digitally distributed sales into account - a massive factor in the PC games industry these days. Our own Brett Thomas sounded off on this very topic earlier today, so check out his column.
In the meantime, discuss EA's bricks and bouquets of the last quarter in the usual place.
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