PS3, PC Sales Lead EA Revenue in Q1 2009

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Earnings from Electronic Arts' PC and PlayStation 3 publishing and development businesses contributed to net revenue of $804 million in the company's fiscal year 2009 first quarter, the publisher revealed today.

The figure marks a $409M year-over-year increase above EA's 2008 Q1 revenue of $395M, led by PlayStation 3 sales amounting to $139M. PC software followed at $86M, while Xbox 360 sales came in third with $81M in the quarter ending June 30, 2008.

Meanwhile, net loss for the quarter was $95 million, down from $132 million from the first quarter of last year.

The company cited EA DICE's Battlefield: Bad Company (PS3, 360) and the BioWare and Demiurge co-developed PC edition of Mass Effect as examples of critically well-received games released in the quarter.

"We are now seeing the early returns of the change agenda we started last year," said EA CEO John Riccitiello. "Innovation and quality are rising, our games are more accessible and fun, and we have more new titles than at any time in our history."

From The Chatty
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    July 29, 2008 4:58 PM

    I am so glad to hear that the PC version of Mass Effect did well. That was the news I was waiting for.

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      July 29, 2008 5:03 PM

      I agree.. it just goes to show you that if you put out QUALITY products, you will get sales.

      Kudos to Demiurge, fantastic job.

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        July 29, 2008 5:14 PM

        Maybe it will start a trend of quality porting.

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          July 29, 2008 5:47 PM

          Wishful thinking though my fingers are crossed.

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          July 29, 2008 5:49 PM

          it couldn't hurt, right?

          If you have not, I'd pick up the Ep. of Played Podcast with the head of Demiurge, gives some great insight on their process with working on the project.

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          July 29, 2008 5:58 PM

          IMO this was not a quality port.

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            July 29, 2008 6:08 PM

            It was a great improvement over the console version.

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        July 29, 2008 6:27 PM

        I heard this game was extremely buggy on pc

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          July 29, 2008 6:38 PM

          I haven't run into many bugs, and it will be interesting to hear if a few of the crashes (which seemed to be linked to AMD cpu's which were mentioned in the patch notes) that I had heard about have been fixed via 1.01. My only major complaints are the horrific shadows (but then that's more of an argument of shadows on PC vs. no shadows on 360... and you can turn the shadows off on PC as well) and that the horrifically uneven distribution of texture resolution in Mass Effect is only all the more blatantly apparent at resolutions higher than 1280x720 ("720p", which is what the 360 outputs ME at)- despite that they have upgraded the resolution of many of the textures. But that's an issue on the 360 as well.

          Otherwise, I wasn't sure I'd like Mass Effect PC, but ultimately went for it anyway. I was originally annoyed with the graphical direction of the game which clearly was console-oriented (toss all of the 360's VRAM at a few textures and leave everything else at GameCube resolution and then only show the good-looking stuff in screenshots and cull out the rest with film grain!), but the tiny tweaks and improvements the PC version have received have grown on me greatly and allowed me to enjoy the game far more than I'd expected I would given the complaints my 360-owning friends had related to me. Smooth, 60fps, k/m control, the retooled combat system (far, far more tactical and on the whole I enjoy ME's battle system and really can't imagine playing the game anymore without a few of the seemingly minor upgrades the PC version got), must faster loads (even if we do have to look at that stupid pixellated disc occasionally), and all the other tiny tweaks that went into the game really shine through- in my opinion, anyway.

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            July 29, 2008 7:49 PM

            It has freezing problems on many computers, otherwise it's fine. That said, the high res textures they added to make it look like an actual pc game were very selective. Devil May Cry 4 is a much better port in terms of graphics and performance.

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              July 29, 2008 8:33 PM

              Definitely. But ME on the 360 already has the same issue of varying texture qualities. Although I will definitely agree that their choice to only upgrade the already upgraded textures definitely makes the disparity far more noticeable.

              On a side note, w00t for DMC 4 PC and I can't wait for Resident Evil 5 PC, xD

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              July 30, 2008 11:57 AM

              Mine would hang constantly until I updated GPU drivers. Now it only crashes every couple of hours ( non-continuous ) of playtime. Luckily I'm one of those people that saves every two seconds so no biggie. btw. Same thing on two different ( Intel ) machines.

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                July 31, 2008 6:37 PM

                Interesting- but I should also probably wonder why your gpu drivers weren't already up to date anyway (and if those weren't, I'd also have to ask whether your sound card/integrated sound, chipset, etc... drivers are also up to date).

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