EA CEO John Riccitiello is stepping down

[Robonaut]

...publishing BioWare products like Dragon Age.

Yeah, I wouldn't put that one in the "positive" column...

[prfsnl_gmr]

You can't blame him for Late 2008, the market crashed, all stocks plummeted down during that period. You can blame him for not being able to recover the company afterwards though.

Good point. Activision was pretty much flat over the same period, but 2012 was much kinder to it. It's price now not terribly far from its pre-crash peak.

(Also, it appears that Capcom's performance over the same period is almost as bad as EA's...)

[Ack]

Someone is going to have to explain this to me. They make a new series of each sports game every year, they have locked in revenue from those games each year, even if they didn't change anything from the previous year. How are they not mega profitable? Did they over-expand or something?

Well, no. First of all, not all sports games and series are successful. EA's been struggling with basketball for several years(both NBA and NCAA), and their contracts with various sports leagues come and go. For instance, EA's contract with NASCAR expired in 2010. Also, not all sports are a guarantee. EA released two Cricket sports titles in the late 1990s and never continued the series. Baseball hasn't worked out for them either since Take Two got the rights to the MLB, MLBPA, and MLBAM in retaliation for EA securing the rights to the NFL. EA did focus on a short NCAA baseball series, but gave it up due to declining sales.

So no, their sports games aren't actually mega profitable, and in some cases EA took a loss due to declining sales in some of these series. Meanwhile, while EA can expect a certain amount of revenue from these games, that revenue then goes for the overall bottom line of the company, which means its various divisions and production houses, some of which are running in the red. Medal of Honor: Warfighter certainly didn't help, nor did the losses accrued due to games like Brutal Legend, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Warhammer Online, etc.

[Ack]

...publishing BioWare products like Dragon Age.

Yeah, I wouldn't put that one in the "positive" column...

I consider BioWare working to be a positive, even if the game isn't the best or even that great.

[Hobie-wan]

the release of bizarre games such as the DRM debacle around the release of Spore and the fact it delivered far less than originally promised

FTFY

I wonder how much of that drop in stock performance was related to people being fed up with the DRM in Spore and later titles?

[01toubib]

]They haven't even made a proper NBA game in some time now. EA actually cancelled NBA Elite '11 right before it was going to store shelves because it was so crappy. It's apparently a collector's item because some copies made it into circulation. As the saying goes, just because it's rare doesn't mean it's good.

NBA Elite was a great game. So good in fact, they only released it for iOS.

[Ack]

the release of bizarre games such as the DRM debacle around the release of Spore and the fact it delivered far less than originally promised

FTFY

I wonder how much of that drop in stock performance was related to people being fed up with the DRM in Spore and later titles?

Spore still managed to sell 2 million units in three weeks. Hell, I wonder how well SimCity 2013 sold.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Darkspore bombed pretty hard didn't it?

It also has crappy DRM.

[FerretGamer]

The current Sim City issues won't help them much either.

[jinx]

Spore was the last game I personally bought from EA with my own money. I don't buy many PC games in the first place, but I went out and spent money on the collectors edition of Spore, because I loved the idea, and I found the game actually enjoyable... once I got to play it. After the rounds I went through to get the game actually working, I got locked out because of the DRM. Fought with customer support for DAYS trying to get a new key, because I only installed it on the one system, and eventually got fed up and cracked the damn game.

EA will only see my money on special occasions. I will not be buying the new SimCity, and I'm not really interested in any of their upcoming titles. I know several other people that feel the same way. A few of which bought SimCity despite their "boycott", and deeply regretted their decision.

I'll admit, they do release some quality games, but as a Linux user and FSF advocate, I refuse to support them.