During a recent Q&A Session of Electronic Arts’ Investor Day Michael Patchter, a Wedbush Securitites Analyst, asked a hardball question to the executive team at EA. Patchter asked EA how they will make sure that the quality and execution of their games will improve. What makes it memorable is that Patchter said the company have “blown it” with the NBA brand, “probably killed Medal of Honor”, and that they didn’t make a “super-high rated Star Wars game.”
This resulted in EA Studios Executive Vice President Patrick Söderlund to give a reply, even to go as far as explaining why Star Wars Battlefront didn’t include a single player campaign. Söderlund stated..
“So, I would agree with you on NBA, that is something that we struggled with as an organization and so we have a different plan in play right now, but we hope to rectify that. Overall, if you look at our overall portfolio, I would say that we’re in good shape.
We are as good or better as the other people in the industry on average. […] Star Wars, I think is a game where you have to look at it from a slightly different perspective. Yes, we know that the one thing that we got criticized for was the lack of a single player campaign in it. It was a conscious decision that we made due to time, and being able to launch the game side by side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact.
I think the team created a really good game based on the premise that we had, and I would say that the game was done very well for us, and reached a very different demographic that a traditional EA game would do. So from that perspective it’s a success.
Are we happy with the 75 ratings? No. Is that something that we’re going to cure going forward? Absolutely. But I think overall, we look at everything that we do in isolation, but if you take a step back and look at our overall portfolio, it’s actually in pretty good shape.”
