EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello recently spoke about the games industry to the Wall Street Journal, stating that "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.” Mr Riccitiello also stated that "For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat," adding that "there's been lots of product that looked like last year's product, that looked a lot like the year before." The company’s net income fell 68% to $76 million this year, continuing a three year drop. Mr Riccitiello returned to his posting at EA in April.

Few can equal EA when it comes to pumping out suspiciously similar iterations of series. Publicly being critical of such a policy is a canny move by Riccitiello, giving hope that massive publisher EA could turn towards more innovative fare. We’ll get to find out over the next few years whether this is a sign of change, or whether EA will still be releasing endless NFL games and Need for Speed: subtitle something in 2010.

He also stated that EA and other games developers and publishers needed to try new sales approaches and to try and entice “casual” gamers into the market. It’s a good move for the company and could be a beneficial for expanding the PS3's user base. At the moment, there aren’t that many games on the PS3 which I think would entice more casual gamers, just the usual console fare: shooters and racers. Although it’s improving, the lack of content on the PSN probably doesn’t help. However, at the end of the day the PS3’s price is probably a bigger barrier to the casual market than its software.

via Spong

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