At today's Electronic Arts conference call, CEO John Riccitiello outlined a new strategy coming from EA, with the company looking to position itself as “a fully integrated digital entertainment company.”
“When we established objectives around reducing title count, cutting costs and starting a digital business, we did so recognizing that we needed to execute a turn-around and the major part of what needed to change was to reduce titles and cost,” said Riccitiello about EA's recent moves in the industry. “Our strategies could be defined as fundamentally 'defensive'. Today, we are announcing a big shift to 'offense'. Over the coming years, we will transform EA from a packaged goods company to a fully integrated digital entertainment company.”
Riccitiello focused on consumers seeing the company as a platform across multiple distributors instead of just a publisher.
“Increasingly, we see ourselves as a software platform every bit as much as we see ourselves as a content maker for other companies’ platforms. We have a great start with 112 million consumers in our Nucleus registration system, up from 61 million a year ago,” he continued. “And, while we will continue to be a great partner to our best retail customers and first party partners, you will see the beginnings of a consumer game platform emerge at EA that complements and extends the console ecosystem and addresses the wider opportunity on other devices.”
When asked if this would conflict with providing titles through other platforms, Riccitiello said that EA doesn't think of itself “in conflict with other distributors.” He compared EA to Amazon's Kindle, or Netflix's streaming video service, two content platforms that can reach consumers in a variety of ways.
It's a wonderful idea, but the company still needs to streamline its digital content offerings a bit more. As an example, Mass Effect 2 DLC remains fragmented, with the content being available on Xbox Live, PSN, and BioWare's Cerebus Network, but not through other platforms like EA's own online store, Steam, or other download services. Amazon's Kindle service is successful because the customer can purchase their content on almost any device with little trouble or effort. Can EA reach that level across its entire product slate?
