Krug
Newshound
Greg Costiyikan has an interesting take on the whole issue:
http://www.costik.com/weblog/
The advantage of sports games, of course, is that it's pretty straightforward to turn out a new game every year--just update the stats, move up the graphics curve as hardware improves, and incrementally update gameplay. And you can be reasonably assured that fans of your football title, say, will buy the next one, because they want the updated stats to keep current with the real world.
It's harder to do that with almost every other game style; while fans of C&C may well be tempted to pick up the next game in the franchise, you also have to sell them on why it's different from previous titles in the series, and what's new and better about it. This is also why EA does well with licensed products, like The Lord of the Rings; innovation isn't required, just doing a good implementation of a well-understood game style.
Where EA has problems is in permitting smaller studios the lattitude to innovate while keeping their cost structure under control. When they buy a smaller studio, it's generally only a matter of time before it's shuttered (like Kesmai) or gutted (like Origin). (Origin, it should be acknowledged, had a good long run before EA decided to yank their props--as did Westwood.)
EA has attempted four major innovations that don't fit their normal mode of production in recent years: The Sims, Majestic, EA.com, and Sims Online. They succeeded with The Sims, and they're to be creditted with backing Will Wright in producing so quirky and so interesting a game (albeit the "success" was more due to supporting it after it created excitement--EA was quite skeptical of the game before published). The other three fared less well: Majestic was essentially an abject failure, despite substantial funding and marketing support. EA.com has been something of a financial disaster, to the point of dragging down EA's earnings for quite some time. And Sims Online--despite a stable launch--was pushed out the door with a far more limited feature set than originally intended. A year ago, EA was talking about it as a potential million-subscriber product; at the moment, it has 80,000 (per rumor), which is creditable, but probably not enough to produce the kind of return EA is looking for. It will be interesting to see how the game develops--Maxis clearly intends to add new features over time, and it's possible that Sims Online can scale up, eventually reaching a considerably larger player base. But that has not been a pattern shown by any other MMG--typically, successful MMGs achieve several hundred thousand users very quickly and, with good management, grow modestly from that level.
The comments section is highly interesting too.
http://www.costik.com/weblog/
The advantage of sports games, of course, is that it's pretty straightforward to turn out a new game every year--just update the stats, move up the graphics curve as hardware improves, and incrementally update gameplay. And you can be reasonably assured that fans of your football title, say, will buy the next one, because they want the updated stats to keep current with the real world.
It's harder to do that with almost every other game style; while fans of C&C may well be tempted to pick up the next game in the franchise, you also have to sell them on why it's different from previous titles in the series, and what's new and better about it. This is also why EA does well with licensed products, like The Lord of the Rings; innovation isn't required, just doing a good implementation of a well-understood game style.
Where EA has problems is in permitting smaller studios the lattitude to innovate while keeping their cost structure under control. When they buy a smaller studio, it's generally only a matter of time before it's shuttered (like Kesmai) or gutted (like Origin). (Origin, it should be acknowledged, had a good long run before EA decided to yank their props--as did Westwood.)
EA has attempted four major innovations that don't fit their normal mode of production in recent years: The Sims, Majestic, EA.com, and Sims Online. They succeeded with The Sims, and they're to be creditted with backing Will Wright in producing so quirky and so interesting a game (albeit the "success" was more due to supporting it after it created excitement--EA was quite skeptical of the game before published). The other three fared less well: Majestic was essentially an abject failure, despite substantial funding and marketing support. EA.com has been something of a financial disaster, to the point of dragging down EA's earnings for quite some time. And Sims Online--despite a stable launch--was pushed out the door with a far more limited feature set than originally intended. A year ago, EA was talking about it as a potential million-subscriber product; at the moment, it has 80,000 (per rumor), which is creditable, but probably not enough to produce the kind of return EA is looking for. It will be interesting to see how the game develops--Maxis clearly intends to add new features over time, and it's possible that Sims Online can scale up, eventually reaching a considerably larger player base. But that has not been a pattern shown by any other MMG--typically, successful MMGs achieve several hundred thousand users very quickly and, with good management, grow modestly from that level.
The comments section is highly interesting too.
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