EA eschews licenses in favor of original games

Think EA is still just dialing it in? Think again.

EA eschews licenses in favor of original games

EA trying a new genre with Mirror's Edge: First-person adventure (click for more screens)

Slowly but surely, EA is shedding its reputation as a sports game updater and movie license whore. By the end of the year, the company will release for original non-license games: Army of Two, Boom Blox, Dead Space, and Mirror's Edge.

To top it off, it's original Skate franchise is a hit, and at least the publisher tried with FaceBreaker. But I digress. EA president Frank Gibeau says the change was a conscious decision, when speaking to Variety on Monday.

"We found a few years ago that we had a set of problems where EA's reputation became one of just doing sports games, sequels and licenses and the market was reacting to newer properties like Grand Theft Auto and Halo," Gibeau told the movie rag. "At the same time, movie and sports licensors started jacking up their rates and it was becoming less profitable to chase licenses."

What's more, EA estimates that more than 50% of their development work is now focused original games. Nice -- you can only go so far with that "if it's in the game, it's in the game," motto.

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imnotirish1990

Tony Soprano: Is it possible for a man like that to have penisary contact with her Volvo?

slickjames

Basically people got tired of buying their crappy games so they started making new ones. So far with the exception of Dead Space they're still making crappy games. They just need new devs, Army of Two was just crap and so was Face Breaker and I don't know if I'm alone on this but Mirrors Edge while inovative looks really boring.

Combat_Monkey

so EA gets credit for reacting about 6 reiterations later that madden and other sports games are losing their luster? I've been in the mindset for a while if EA makes it then its only a rentable game.

VivaLeResistance

I like EA's new approach for games....I just hope they don't whore out bioware.

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