EA Vice President Jeff Brown says that EA will develop games for the next gen machine that will have the largest user base, and according to Brown, that platform will be Sony,s PS3. His comments were made to Eurogamer during EA,s annual game conference, Studio Showcase ,06.
“EA is most committed to the platform with the biggest installed base. We’ve always been very practical and open about the fact that this is a business; if you do well in business, you get to keep making more games, and you can hire more people to make more different kinds of games – as long as you remember that this is a business first,” said Brown.
“This is not a business plan, but there are a lot of people at EA who are walking around whispering: "40 / 40 / 20 per cent." The last time out, it was 65-70 per cent PlayStation, and everybody else divided up the 30 per cent that was left. Microsoft obviously took a big piece. Now it looks like 40 / 40 / 20 – Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo – and that is good for us, and it’s good for people who like games.”
Nintendo,s rise in the ranks at EA development was explained by their very strong showing at E3 with the Wii game console. “One of the things that we noticed after E3 is we thought, you know, we’re going to support Nintendo, they’ve got an extraordinarily loyal base of consumers all over the world, and we had a number of games we planned to make for Nintendo Wii. That said, we were very surprised by the level of enthusiasm we saw at E3 and subsequently for the Wii.”
Brown continued and said that while Nintendo has been called everyone,s second choice for a next gen console, in other words, a game console that will be bought after the initial PS3 or 360 purchase, this is actually good news for Mario and friends. “Here’s another thing that I think trends well for both the business and for consumers: everybody’s saying that the Nintendo Wii is so unique that it’s going to be the second system people buy, meaning if you own a 360 or a PS3, you’ll probably also buy a Nintendo Wii. The funny thing is, some people say that discursively, like it’s some sort of dig at Nintendo – and what they don’t get is that if you’re second on everybody’s system, you’re first overall.”
In reference to the PS3,s high price point, Brown remarked that the price might be a deterrent to establishing a larger user base for the machine, but that Sony would be able to pull off a marketing campaign that would help sell PS3s. “Say what you will about the PlayStation 3, we know this as fact: Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Corporation are very, very, very good at marketing consumer electronics. These guys aren’t dumb. I wish it was cheap – look, at EA, we wish there was a $200 PlayStation 3 out there; we love big, big numbers on installed base.”
“But they have a business that they have to maintain, that’s the price point they came to. Is it a little high? Perhaps it is, but I would never underestimate their ability to market consumer electronics.”
