IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

EA Partners Head Says Game Budgets Have Peaked

Posted August 25, 2010 by M.H. Williams

While speaking to GI.biz at Gamescom 2010, EA Partners boss David Demartini told them that he believed that ever-ballooning game budgets might be a trend of the past.

"I think budgets for games have actually peaked and are starting to move in the reverse direction again," he said. "I don’t think there’s any one right budget for any game. It kind of depends on how big the idea is and what the team needs to be able to make a 90 percent-rated game with the idea that they’re working on."

DeMartini says that consumers have a depth of information about titles at their fingertips, so it becomes harder to slide a bad game past them.

"Consumers are so much more informed. Before you occasionally used to be able to slide a clunker out there and still do well, but now people are so informed by the various outlets that I don’t think anybody makes an uninformed purchase anymore."

He explained that for EA Partners, the strategy is to aim for developers with past success.

“Games with pedigree, in my business anyway, making investments in various studios and stuff, the best predictor of future success is past success,” he said. “So when you turn to the likes of Epic or Valve or Crytek or Harmonix, those kinds of studios, you kind of go in with a leg up. Those are teams that know what they’re doing.”

DeMartini stressed that different games require different budgets and that EA Partners was not only committed to AAA titles, but also growing new talent.

“There’s different ways to make games. There’s no one way to the finish line, you just need to make sure that you pick a path that’s going to get you there,” he added. “We’ve got a program that we call Arthouse that has Deathspank from Hothead, Shank from Play Entertainment. So in the downloadable games market those are a couple of very strong emerging companies that may well say 'gee, now I want to take my IP to the main console, do you want to do that?' And based on success at a lower level, that might be the next step for them.”

M.H. Williams has been writing in some form or another for ten years and has been a hardcore gamer since the NES first graced American shores.  You can catch him on Twitter as @AutomaticZen, Google+ as himself, or on his personal Facebook page.