EA Unafraid to Kill Games

Why not make it a budget game instead of a total loss

Since when has EA possessed the knowledge necessary to measure quality?

Props to EA for having the balls to cancel a game that isn't up to par.

EA is on the right track. Riccitiello is as much of a businessman as anyone else in his position would be, but he's absolutely right. I had the exact same reaction to those analysts' claims.

"It's a perverse notion--beyond perverse, bizarre, upside down, illogical, stupid to state that we've killed a project that wasn't going to yield what we thought wasn't a high enough quality product as indicative of problems."

So canceling a project because of poor quality isn't indicative of problem. OK. Well said you wordsmith.

Yeah, yeah. Nice bit of PR-speak. The real reason it was canned is because it would've cost more than the expected return to put it back on track. EA's definition of quality is how well it sells, and has nothing to do with customer satisfaction or whether a game is "good" or "fun." It's not like EA has a reputation to maintain, after all.

"When you burn the omelette, you don't serve it," oh great, EA is a short order cook.

Heh. This isn't news to people who played Earth and Beyond.

This is so nice, first your company has so many internal problems and miscommunication that EA LA just dosn't hit your tight-assed goals and then you spin it into a big "See, we are unafraid to kill a game or two every year" slogan?

Of all companies, EA simply does not have the measurement tools and understanding to correctly evaluate why a game is successful and why not. There are so many games out there that weren't blockbuster selling mega titles and still left a lasting impression for many gamers. They had their success. The developers were happy and moved on to make a different game.

So please EA, tread lightly - you might just step on the wrong game.

EA, Madden is a game, so yeah, you can chop down that one too.

he sure killed Multiplayer Battletech 3025....


prick

Tiberium, canned for not meeting EA's quality standards

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

"EA will kill a game or two a year," asserted Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. "Forever."

that sounds more like a goal

EA should focus on learning from their past mistakes (cancellations) and learning to identify a potentially bad game much sooner in development, rather than making it commonplace or acceptable to cancel games every year.

I didn't work on the canceled games, and don't know anything else apart from these news bits on the matter, but to me quotes such as these bespeak gross internal mismanagement on EA's behalf (as far as their publishing duties go) rather than sound or wise game development/publishing credos.

Quality, and therefore its assessment, should be prevalent at all stages of development, not reserved for judgment months or even years later into development. You shouldn't keep hacking off entire limbs of a tree when you think they've grown incorrectly. Learn to gradually shape and prune development from at least the sapling stage.

$0.02

Sucks that it got canned. Looked cool.

tiberium must have been pretty bad for it to get killed, considering hellgate london actually got released...

I don't know, it just looks weird to read "EA" and "quality standard" in the same sentence.

I guess they don't mind killing games with crazy DRM either

At first I was pretty disappointed about Tiberium being canned, however looking back at those screenshots, it was actually rather shitty looking.

I was finding it kind of strange that analysts were painting this as some indicator of inner struggle. Go go Riccitiello, you're awesome.

it's cool that they're doing this, and I don't think many people will miss this C&C spinoff, but what if this policy becomes a reason to axe ambitious/innovative projects in favor of safe bets? Some of my favorite games have had long and troubled development cycles.

I don't think the current EA is in danger of doing that, but if they ever become top dog again I can see them doing that.

Smart move, just kind of sad to see the "Renegade" curse still holds true.

There are way too many lens flares in those screenshots.