Has EA (Electronic Arts) finally woken up to the pile of trashy games accumulating under it’s belt? Apparently so. Under EA’s belt are a number of games, which to say the least, crappy titles and poorly-made licensed games. These include:

• Catwoman
• Harry Potter
• Superman Returns

The list could go on but I’m afraid I’ll be listing about half of the games EA has licensed.

In an case, here’s what CEO John Riccitiello has to say:

I think what redeems our industry is quality, and I think we take a step back every time we take a license and exploit it with a crappy game. That’s not what we’re about.

Quality over Milking the Cash Cow

EA is well known for their long running sports games like Fifa, NBA Live and Madden but after securing rights to be the ONLY publisher to use team names (it’s a lot more than that but it’ll do), they became complacent that no matter how little improvement, people will still buy their games.  And as expected from die hard fans, the games mentioned above still sell like hotcake.

Poor reviews and dismal quality on their games slowly but surely began to tarnish the EA brand. There’s been very little in terms of innovation if you compare the previous incarnation of NBA Live to the present one.

Yes, there is one gem in EA’s line up, NCAA Football 2009.  It’s fully featured and innovative and arguably one of the better games in the genre.  That however is a trend that we yet have to see passed on to other titles.

A change of perspective

Even before the annoucement was made, EA has started to pick up the pace in terms of quality. Their 2008 line up of games speak for themselves. Here’s EA’s line up and the awards they’ve been nominated and/or awarded with:

• Mirror’s Edge  – Best Original Game, Best of the Show, Best Action Game
• Spore – Best Original Game, Best of the Show, Best PC Game
• Dead Space – Best Action/Adventure Game
• Warhammer Online – Best PC Game
• Left 4 Dead – Best Original Game, Best Action Game
• Rock Band 2 – Minor
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3

The bottom line of EA’s lengthy announcement is to return to making good, original games.  Something that’s been a rare commodity.

EA has busied itself by creating new game IPs and acquiring well known studios like Bioware and Pandemic and things are looking up as far as the quality department is concerned.  For the moment though, it’s back to Diablo II (a Blizzard game hehe) for me.