EA: Wii Want To Be Second To Nintendo News
Jon Wilcox
02/02/2007
In an investor conference call, Electronic Arts confirms its intentions for Nintendo's next-gen system...
Electronic Arts' CEO Larry Probst has confirmed the publisher's ambition to support Wii, second only to Nintendo themselves. In the statement, which was issued in a webcast of EA's latest financial results, Probst said: "Clearly Nintendo will always be number one on the Wii and Nintendo DS, but we believe that we can be number two."
Through the course of the webcast, the publishing giant confirmed that fifteen titles for Wii and Nintendo DS would be released during the 2008 fiscal year (between April 2007 and March 2008), including a version of Will Wright's Spore for DS.
Probst also reiterated that support of Wii and DS wouldn't come at the expense of the other platforms: "The support for Wii and Nintendo DS is not at the expense of the other platforms that we deem strategic, so you'll continue to see us be very prolific [on the other systems]."
Explaining EA's strategy, Probst commented: "One of the things that we've done is acquire the Headgate Studio in Salt Lake City. Up to this point, they've been exclusively developing for the Wii platform, which will give us some additional capacity on the Wii. We're redirecting additional resources towards Wii and NDS [Nintendo DS]."
"By the end of this fiscal year, we'll have six titles in the market for the platform, which other that Ubisoft, will make us the most prolific on the Wii platform through to the end of March...We have very aggressive market share goals on both Nintendo platforms."
In addition to the Wii and DS titles set to make an appearance in the next fiscal year, EA will be releasing four titles on Wii and two on DS by the end of March 31st 2007.