Can Electronics Arts ... Change?

According to Business Week, they'll have to:

But now EA is stumbling, and a big part of its time-tested strategy is about to change. The company hopes that its next mega-franchise will revolve not around a football star, a boy wizard, or a dashing British spy, but...a microbe. The game is called Spore. Developed by Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, it lets players design an invertebrate in its primordial stages and then guide its evolution until the creature's offspring develop into a thriving civilization with cities, religion, and spaceships. EA's ambitious goal is to create more such innovative, internally developed games while lessening the company's dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises.

-- Electronic Arts: A Radical New Game Plan

I still remember the Electronic Arts days of the M.U.L.E., Adventure Construction Set and of course ... Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One. If giants like EA are forced to create more innovative games ... what will it do to the market? The indies? All the snarky jokes?




tagged: game, gaming