EA Restricts New IPs, Maintains Focus On Quality, Takes Risk On Wii News

EA's decision to introduce critically acclaimed yet commercially weak titles based around new IPs last year is well documented; the simple fact is neither Mirror's Edge or Dead Space sold as well as EA originally expected.

In an interview with Gamasutra, EA's Game Label president Frank Gibeau has revealed the lessons that the world's second largest publisher has learnt from the exercise and pledged support to continue the faith behind quality.

When asked whether they launched too many original titles during the 2008 period, Gibeau responded:

"I'm not the kind of guy who ever looks back. I look back long enough to learn a few things and then apply them going forward. I think in the spirit of your question, I think we launched too many new IPs all at once in Q3."

Gibeau stresses that more significance is placed on the title in terms of polishing and playtesting than ever before, suggesting that blockbuster titles that achieve a 75% rating just can't make a profit any longer. 

"Dead Space is one of those titles that has a lot of polish built into it, and a lot of the games we're doing right now like, you know, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, and Need for Speed Shift, is two months polish time.

Last year's Need for Speed finished and went into test, and that was it. There was no time in the schedule because of the way that the studios have been set up. So we had to break the cycle and start to give some very careful consideration."

When asked how many new IPs EA intends to launch per year, Gibeau reveals that "two to three" is the likely number, including titles created under the EA Partners brand.  Last year the publisher launched Spore, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Facebreaker, Battlefield: Bad Company, Left 4 Dead and Army of Two.

Finally when asked about the difficulties that third-party publishers continue to face with Wii, Gibeua admitted that bringing core experiences such as the forthcoming Dead Space: Extraction are a "calculated risk". 

Gibeau claims that Nintendo's dominance creates a difficult ecosystem, adding that Microsoft has absolutely "nailed it" in terms of first and third-party success with the Xbox 360.