Financial Times: EA Could Lose Big with The Godfather

Development costs and delay-induced stock drops ultimately cost EA $800 for The Godfather game, according to the Financial Times

A report on the Financial Times details EA's struggles in developing The Godfather game. The article adds up EA's various expenses in creating the game and estimates that the game cost EA over $800 million.

The breakdown is unusual. The article speculates that EA spent "a reported $10 to $20 million" to create the actual Godfather game. But thanks to a well-publicized delay of the game from its original late 2005 release date, EA's stock dropped some 5 percent -- which, as the Financial Times puts it, "[cut] more than $800m from the company's value."

Another major problem: the price. With interest in next-generation consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 rising, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for publishers to charge the standard $49.99 for a current-generation title. As such, EA recently made the decision to drop The Godfather game to a more mass market-friendly $39.99 price point. Though this move could pay off, EA will need to sell more units in order to turn a big profit.

Making matters worse, the Financial Times piece also claims that EA won't release the next-gen version of The Godfather until "late this year." We asked our EA representatives about the Xbox 360 version of The Godfather, and they responded that they had "no word whatsoever" on the status of that version.

In other news, the PC, PS2, and Xbox versions of The Godfather have already turned up on pirate torrent sites across the internet.

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