EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: johnriccitiello

After worse than expected quarterly financial results, and poor market reception to its original intellectual property (IP) such as Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge and Brütal Legend, EA has revealed their future strategic plans, and it doesn’t look good for original, innovative content.

In the wake of the announcement that EA is to cut 1500 jobs across all of it studios, and the revelation that nearly a dozen, unannounced titles currently in development at the publisher had been cancelled, EA CEO John Riccitiello has pointed the way forward for the company:

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During EA’s earning’s call on Monday, it was announced the publisher is being forced to cut 1500 jobs across all of its studios, which is necessary, says CEO John Riccitiello, to “transform the company.”

“EA is performing well, with quality, sales and segment share up so far this year,” said Riccitiello during the call. “We are making tough calls to cut cost in targeted areas and investing more in our biggest games and digital businesses.”

Commenting on the poor performance of the videogame industry in general, Riccitiello continued:

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EA’s financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year are looking a little droopy, as losses of $234 million (up $95 million last year) dragged the company’s performance down.

EA CEO John Riccitiello says, however, that their quarterly net revenue of $644 million is “better than expected,” even though that number is down from $804 million during the same period last year:

“Good execution delivered better-than-expected financial results in the first quarter,” said Riccitiello.

Driving this performance were the releases of The Sims 3 (with 3.7 million units sold), EA Sports Active (1.8 million units sold) and Fight Night Round 4.

The Sims 3 was notably the top selling game at retail in both North America and Europe for the quarter combined, while EA Sports Active is now officially EA’s most successful Wii game, helping EA to a 21% and 13% share of that console’s market in North America and Europe respectively.

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Microsoft’s John Schappert, who has served as one of the software and hardware giant’s key spokespeople for team Xbox since 2007, has left the company’s employ to return to Electronic Arts as chief operating officer (COO) – the very company he got his start at as a software engineer in 1991.

Current COO at EA, John Pleasants, is reportedly leaving EA to become CEO of casual gaming company, Playdom, as Schappert is set to take over from July 14th.

During his time at Microsoft, Schappert was responsible for launching the online services division (which controlled Xbox LIVE) and oversaw development of franchises such as Halo and Gears of War as corporate VP of the Interactive Entertainment Business (which controls Microsoft Game Studios).

Schappert is also credited with launching the New Xbox LIVE Experience and increasing LIVE’s service base to 20 million members from 6 millions users.

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