What happened to EA?

[f1seb]

EA is the power house in the video game market. They do everything, from publishing to developing to marketing. They are on all fronts and they are all very successful in doing it. For a number of years now gamers have been voicing their displeasure of the quality of the product that EA has releasing.

Not long ago, I remember them being the new kid on the block in the sports franchise. The Genesis was their main platform and they released sports titles that got better and better as the years went on stuffing more and more features into them. EA sports was great. Not only that but they also had great arcade games, remember Road Rash?

So when did this decline begin to happen? I realize that not everybody will have the same time frame or reason for this so I'd like to hear from as many fellow gamers as possible. For me it was after Red Alert 2. A quality strategy game, I bought it without even looking at any game reviews or anything. From previously palying RA 1 I knew that when I saw the "Westwood and EA" on that box it was going to be a great game. And it was. It was freaking amazing. For a while I got into the MMO genre and didn't play much of anything. I then heard about the new game being released, Generals in 2003. I went to the video game store and I purchased it. Installed it and played it and was just not interested in that game at all. It was boring and empty. I then picked the box up and couldn't find the green friendly "Westwood" logo on the box. I started to search the interwebs and read about the whole story of EA and Westwood. That's when I started to look at EA in a different light. And from that day on I've been looking at all their games, games that they don't even develop but stick their name on, as if I'm looking at them under a microscope.

[sr20fan]

i absolutely hate ea now. everything they touch turns to ****. i have the ps3 version of orange box and all i played was portal. everything else sucked. i dont remember if they were the ones that actually ported it or if it was some other place, but they put their name on it and i ended up with ****. im glad they didnt mess with dice too much on battlefield bad company, that game turned out great. the online has hiccups and my friend and i both have had it freeze up our ps3's, but other than that, very fun.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Electronic Arts is the embodiment of EVERYTHING that is WRONG with the videogame industry today. They're all about income over quality, and they're not afraid to ruin well-liked IPs in order to get that income. If they see something popular and have the money to take it, they will. Then they'll dumb it down, cheapen it, and slap ten sequels on shelves. The product will be terrible, but the name will continue selling.Fortunately, the C&C games are among the very few exceptions to this (save Generals, which sucked). Maxis' games are the other.

The real downfall began around 1999 or 2000 in my eyes. That's when the company began making the changes that made it the company it is today. It was the time of the name change from Electronic Arts to EA.~2004 marked the time when the company started getting truly ridiculous.

THIS is the kind of bullpucky that makes EA a terrible, horrible, evil company:http://www.gamesindustry.biz/a...alyst

EA has NO respect for the property they aqcuire nor the people who created it. They'll buy up an IP, fire the original creators, then turn the IP inside out and sell budget versions of it for high profit. The product quality is terrible and worse, oftentimes something potentially great is lost.EA doesn't care if they run the entire gaming industry into the ground so long as they still turn a profit. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be fought with legal restrictions. You should not be permitted to buy someone's property (often by force) then kick out the creator and ruin the product. In my kind of world, that would be punishable by a revocation of rights to do business ever again.

EA is a disgusting swine of a company and I look forward to seeing them in Hell.

[sr20fan]

+1

[f1seb]

When EA threw money at the NFL with the BS excuse that they wanted to make sure that the gamers would get quality games was the final straw for me. It was a dirty move and only a business move. Although Visual Concepts sales didn't cut much into the Madden profits, their games received better reviews by nearly all the major video game magazines. And everybody saw that by eliminating the competition they no longer had to worry about making their product better. We sure get some quality sports games from them now. Their FIFA series looks like hasn't changed much at all since 2003, well other than the controller part. And don't get me started on NASCAR.

[dasoupdude]

See if those bastahds get their hands on it, by the time of its next release it would be dumbed down. i.e. start having burger king and mcdonald's and other real world companies in the game (which of course will make them a pretty penny.) that also takes away from the games humor

EA