Electronic Arts says the old way of releasing games doesn't work anymore - Sensationalist Headlines

Try releasing games on the bottom of the ocean then. And while you are down there, don't bother coming back up.

"The reality is, it's not just an EA challenge, it's an industry-wide challenge," CEO Andrew Wilson said during the call Uh huh, sure.

Well, the fact that they're in financial trouble doesn't really say anything about how much money they make, only that they're not making enough and that has to do with expectations.

On a side note but are Sony exclusives such as God of War developed with a net loss in order promote the platform itself? If I'm not mistaken I read that many of the massive exclusive blockbusters are often not that profitable due to the massive costs but are intended to further establish the brand. I'm glad if someone could correct me on this though.

God of War sold over 5 million copies in one month and had over 9 million unique users. It was the second best selling game last year, just behind Spider-Man. It's not impossible that God of War made a loss overall, but I highly doubt it did. I can't find anything about the budget of the game or the actual sales numbers as game companies are very cagey about that kind of thing, probably because if they released it publicly the standard "Oh woe is us poor game publishers, making games is so expensive" spiel would collapse.

and it's not like any of these gaming companies pay anywhere near their fair share in taxes, using every loophole and haven in the book to keep every dollar they can It's all a giant exaggerated charade.

Incorrect. It works plenty. It doesn't work instantaneously, and anyone whom would expect it to is naive. Part of the reason for that is companies will punnish devs before they punish the home team, it still remains the most absolutely effective means of bringing permanent change tot he entertainment industry. If publishers want to make interactive storytelling a commodity, consumers need to treat it like commodity, and then it becomes utterly disposable.

What do you define as "working" in this case? Wether people buy something or not is ultimately what leads to the corporations making the decisions they do because they want to make profits, but the majority of people don't give a crap about anything other than buying games they think they'll enjoy so at large the concept of voting with your wallet isn't a thing.

I don't have to define 'as working' when it's very much a thing and in plain sight. Mass Effect, Ninja Gaiden, The entirety of Tell Tales throughput, several Star Wars franchises, Resident Evil's turnaround, Id's product line turnaround. Ubi$haft and EA are monolithic, they do not comprise all of electronic gaming, and even they aren't immune, and you can't conflate they are or do.

I must not be seeing the obvious here, what about these franchises/games you mentioned changed the industry as a result of people voting with their wallets?

People are voting with their wallets, but the companies that make the games are getting the wrong message. Don't buy something from a beloved series cause it's a crap game? "I guess people aren't interested in that franchise". Don't buy an overpriced lack-of-content multiplayer game? "Guess we need to make it free2play and shove micro-transactions up the ass". Don't buy a single-player game with micro transactions and game play designed around them? "Guess people don't like single-player games". Don't by enough copies of a high-skill niche title? "Guess people don't want these games since we only made twice our money back and not thrice". Don't buy a game because it's got gambling in it? "Guess we need to make more of these as the 1% of people who buy in spent shitloads repeatedly". Don't buy a crappy shovel-ware game? "Guess we need to put our games on mobile phones". Don't buy a game due to bad working conditions, unethical behavior, etc? "Guess we need to put out some PR and pay off some journalists to write good stuff about us" On the flipside, once you buy a game, they get the message that you accept its faults, and double down on them. People didn't mind that the writing wasn't so good so let's phone that in and focus on cosmetics. People didn't mind the gambling so let's hide essential game-play behind it People didn't mind cosmetic DLC so let's chop put parts of our game and sell it separately People didn't mind the tedious quests so lets add more to pad it out People didn't mind the lack of 5.1 surround so lets not fix that "sound coming out of the center channel only" thing People didn't mind day one patches so lets just sell CD keys in cases instead of actual discs People like this series so lets slap a coat of paint on this shit game so it belongs to that series Voting with your wallet is an ambiguous message. Realistically, you need to make your voice heard in a clear way. Petitions would work if people didn't fucking sign and then buy the game afterwards. If enough people vocally said "if you do X with your next game we won't buy it" and meant it they'd fucking not do X as they could quantify how many lost sales they risk. Then again, dealing with the 1% of people who might buy it anyways adding continuous revenue sometimes outweighs that loss of customers unfortunately.