EA CEO Ricitello resigns

What have we done.

May I speak freely?

Good riddance. I hope his replacement will be better, but I have high doubts on that.

Not that surprising TBH, you can't solely blame it on him, but the trend of the last year or so has been that EA's games have under performed both in reviews and commercially, doubt shareholders are too happy about that. Even back with SWTOR, which was a big gamble that didn't pay out I expected it to have repercussions on Richitello.

Would be pretty great if Peter Moore steps up as the new CEO, always liked him (Dreamcast all the way baby!).

what Mazy said

Quote from Mazy

Not that surprising TBH, you can't solely blame it on him, but the trend of the last year or so has been that EA's games have under performed both in reviews and commercially, doubt shareholders are too happy about that. Even back with SWTOR, which was a big gamble that didn't pay out I expected it to have repercussions on Richitello.

Would be pretty great if Peter Moore steps up as the new CEO, always liked him (Dreamcast all the way baby!).

For what metacritic is worth: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-p…r-2012-releases

There's just a lot of badmouthing going on but what's new, shit's always the stuff that sticks the longest. You barely hear a single positive thing about EA anymore so no surprise people forget about those things immediately. I won't say it's completely undeserved but EA sure has been the scapegoat lately. Not entirely sure of the impact SWTOR had but that probably must've been a huge downer indeed, amongst others (warfighter, although I've heard it still sold somewhat decently).

I don't know much about shareholders, finances and commercial success and all that since it doesn't really concern me first-hand but from the little I've picked up I think he did a great job given the circumstances. The climate has been pretty tough the last few years but he did a great job in the change and brought in a lot of digital revenue like he said he would. I hope someone capable takes his place. I definitely think he's brought an improvement to EA. EA from before his era wasn't exactly spectacular...

He was on that rumored list of CEO's to get fired in 2013 so I definitely saw this one coming, probably was a lot of pressure from the board.

Thanks Obama

edit I love Dreamcast (powerstone rules)

Quote from Chimeray

For what metacritic is worth: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-p…r-2012-releases

There's just a lot of badmouthing going on but what's new, shit's always the stuff that sticks the longest. You barely hear a single positive thing about EA anymore so no surprise people forget about those things immediately. I won't say it's completely undeserved but EA sure has been the scapegoat lately. Not entirely sure of the impact SWTOR had but that probably must've been a huge downer indeed, amongst others (warfighter, although I've heard it still sold somewhat decently).

I don't know much about shareholders, finances and commercial success and all that since it doesn't really concern me first-hand but from the little I've picked up I think he did a great job given the circumstances. The climate has been pretty tough the last few years but he did a great job in the change and brought in a lot of digital revenue like he said he would. I hope someone capable takes his place. I definitely think he's brought an improvement to EA. EA from before his era wasn't exactly spectacular...

He was on that rumored list of CEO's to get fired in 2013 so I definitely saw this one coming, probably was a lot of pressure from the board.

Again, you obviously can't solely blame this on him, but for better or worse then he's in large part accountable for any good or bad direction that the company takes. Supposedly this fiscal quarter's revenues are gonna be quite a bit under their projection, so this all seems like damage control to prevent the shares from sliding even further.

I actually wasn't aware that they're in the top in terms of reviews of 2012. Sure, there's games like ME3, FIFA and NFS:MW, but then there's also stuff like MOH:Warfighter, Syndicate, Kingdoms of Amaleur and Dead Space 3 (and I sadly suspect Crysis 3 will be on that list as well) that haven't exactly gotten completely slaughtered in reviews (okay, Warfighter doesn't count there), but have pretty much killed of their continued franchise prospects since it looks like they've been pretty far from return of investment.

It's not different from others, have a few cash cows (FIFA, BF, NFS) that pretty much generate the majority of the revenue, but my impression is that EA has had a lot of those in 2012, combined with SWTOR that is supposedly the most expensive game made to date, with their subscribers dwindling in size after the strong launch.

Anyway, I wish the best for EA, BF3 and NFS:MW are some of my favorite games of the last year, and I do think all this stuff with targeting EA is out of control, but they do make themselves pretty easy targets for hardcore gamers in a lot of cases with their raging hardons for micro-transations.

I've met him briefly, super nice guy and he does seem to care about people on an interpersonal level. I don't hear stories of him as this tyrant jerkwad of a CEO, so that's good. However, a big issue I have is the question of self-dealing when he sells his company to EA a couple months after taking the helm. In other words, he left EA in 2004 to form the private equity firm Elevation Partners which then bought Pandemic and Bioware. Then Elevation sold P/B to EA for $830 million and he became the CEO of EA. So basically he sold his company and become the CEO of the firm he sold it to. Pretty sweet...it was a big investment and I am sure one that paid off nicely for him. This "big, bold move" strategy set the tone for his role as CEO:

- Start with the opening move of the Bioware/Pandemic sale (exclude SWTOR right now). To the $830 million add a couple hundred million for Mass Effect and Dragon Age games....have ME and DA earned back over $1 billion?

- Now look at SWTOR which cost $250+ million between development, marketing, licensing and operational costs? Has it made its money back? It certainly brought in some revenues but not enough.

- EA bought Playfish for $300 million in 2009 and that was basically money wasted.

- EA bought Popcap for $750 million in 2011 with another $600 million in earn-out clauses to Popcap ownership...a potential $1.3 billion cost. This has fared better than Playfish but EA hasn't made its money back yet.

At the end of the day, people will nerdrage at EA all day long but given how many good people they employ, I really hope it gets better there and they put out better games (sports, shooters, rpgs, casual, mobile, etc. etc.) and ease off the bloodsucking microtransaction strategy everywhere (which they seem to be realizing is pissing people off anyway)

He supported Double Fine when nobody else would and got Brutal Legend out the door, can't hate on the guy too much.

Doesnt EA kind of have the market on sports games? Doesn't those games sell a truck load?

Holy cock 250 mill for the old republic.

i hope you're all taking advantage of the EA Player Appreciation Sale?

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