I somehow missed this from the other day:[...] EA CFO Eric Brown explained that [EA] would henceforth only be releasing annual guidance as the games industry "is hit driven, seasonal and significantly impacted by the release dates for our titles," which he said "creates uneven quarterly comparisons, both sequentially and year-over-year."Now, any concept that includes the words "fiscal year" is not generally my area of expertise, but I think I'm correct in reading this as EA saying that the continued high quality of its titles is more important than titles meeting their arbitrary release dates?
Explicitly, Brown said that "if we delay a title for quality reasons from one quarter to another in the same fiscal year, while good for the long-term future of the franchise, it could have a significant impact on our quarterly performance without necessarily affecting our annual performance."
Quote via Gamasutra.
If so, that's a big step forward for the notoriously bottom-line-focused EA, and by extension the gaming industry. Huzzah.
(Gamasutra goes on to note that EA's stocks dropped 10% on Wall Street following this announcement. Ouch.)
2 comments:
This puts me in mind of a recent post at Magical Wasteland: You Can't Fake Quality
Hey, that's a good post. Thanks for the link.
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