No, really. Sure, game development clocked in around $10-20 million, but when EA announced the game would be delayed, missing the critical holiday sales period, the financial impact on the company was somewhere in the realm of $800 mill. Now at the $40 price point, EA is making it even more difficult to recover their losses. The game ships this week for PC and current generation consoles, with an Xbox 360 (and surely a PS3) version planned for the next holiday season. The Godfather was seen as a blockbuster franchise by EA when it acquired the rights and began developing the game – with the original star Marlon Brando completing voiceovers for his Don Corleone, Godfather character before his death. But while the world’s largest video-games publisher has spent a reported $10m to $20m to recreate the New York mafia world for games consoles and the PC, it has already taken a bigger financial hit from delays to the game. Its shares fell nearly 5 per cent last July, cutting more than $800m from the company’s value, after it warned of a delay that would make the product miss the big end-of-year holiday season. The setback contributed to revenue warnings that saw its shares slip further. In February, EA confirmed The Godfather would finally be released this month at the premium price of $49.95. But less than three weeks later, it changed its mind and announced a $39.95 price tag. Like the rest of the industry, EA has been suffering from pricing pressures as consumers resist paying high prices for more limited current-generation games, now that the next-generation Xbox 360 console has appeared. EA’s version of The Godfather for the 360 will not be ready until late this year. The game is the most complex yet attempted by the publisher – it is the first of its “open world†games where players can take a number of different directions in the mafia environment, rather than climb through levels. It has three different endings, including one that is close to that of the original movie. “It’s been very difficult to pull off and we’ve had one slip – from November to March – but we’ve managed to move it from being ordinary to extraordinary with the extra tuning that it needed,†David De Martini, executive producer of The Godfather, told the Financial Times. Peer Schneider, head of content publishing at IGN, the video-game information network, said games reviewers felt The Godfather had not been fleshed out enough and EA had been under pressure to improve the product. “EA has had a lot to prove – they have to make fans happy who like [car action game] Grand Theft Auto but also those who see it as more than an action movie. If you mess up on, say, Terminator 2, it’s not so bad, but when something is seen as one of the top-10 movies of all time, you don’t want to harm that franchise.†The Godfather is released in North America on Tuesday and in Europe on March 24 Source : http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2c08ef9a-b776-11da-b4c2-0000779e2340.html
800 mill, well they'll figure out someway to milk another franchise and stay in buisness. I got to admit the $40 price is probably in desperation to sell it.
no, the $40 price is the market right now. It's not desperation, it's just that no one wants to pay the old price for a new game on dying consoles.
People who like scarface will buy it without any consideration of gameplay. "It's that gangsta shit yo"
im fortunate enough never to own an ea game. Maybe I should go see if Frances Ford Copalla is intrestead in protesting this game.
Good for you ! A man just like myself. Thank God that the EA logo isn't the only one on Sokyugurentai. yakumo
theres a difference between the stuff EA makes, and the stuff they publish. I liked the latest timespliters...
YES. That game gets NO LOVE at all! It was freakin made by the Makers of Goldeneye N64 for Christs sake! :banghead:
800 mil? wow what a sum...i played it, and i definetly won't buy it. you don't actually notice that it cost 800mil while playing
810 million lost in profits? On a $40 game? 810m/40 = 20.25 million sales, and that's at 100% profit on the $40 retail (which is obviously incorrect). Are they saying that well over 20 million copies would have been sold over the last 4 months? A little optimistic, isn't it?
you'd think they'd be in a nice spot, seeing as how the majority of 360 games are seemingly made by EA.
I couldn't care less, it's a damn shame to have the largest company in the industry refusing to make anything new. The Godfather and Black might be called new IP's, but it's not like they're doing anything new. It seems like the only decent stuff they release is through their partner program (at least in Europe). Things like Timesplitters 3, Soul Calibur 2 and We Love Katamari. Still, really couldn't care less about them dying.
I agree on both accounts. EA does do some bad crap, but sometimes the hate is a bit blind because then people will miss out on games from independent developers(in the extreme case) like Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Shame that the development studio closed up shortly after the game's release. Their office was actually in a town just 30 mi. away.
