EA CFO Presents At Bear Sterns Conference

Presenting at the ongoing Bear austeres media conference in Florida, Electronic Arts chief financial officer Warren Jenson raised the greatest in quantity eyebrows with his mention of EA's upcoming Godfather film adaptation. However, his presentation also overspreaded many subjects relating to EA's coming time plans and the games industry in general, particularly the busy transitional period owed to accompany a new generation of solaces in the next three years. With the upcoming first appearance of two new handhelds and at least individual new console potentially ready for unveiling within this month there's certainly a allotment going on at the industry's biggest publisher and elsewhere.

The first major happening we have to direct the eye forward to is of course the arrival of the fresh handhelds, Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP While the delay in the North American release of Sony's PSP handheld has raised a certain number of questions about that platform's unravelling Jenson was still very upbeat about its visions Regarding the delay, "realistically, it's not that big a deal for us," he said. The real experiment for the PSP, instead, will be its first holiday in the fall of 2005 and EA wait fors the handheld to do well in its first year. Reiterating earlier confimation of out-front software support, Jenson said that EA plans "to be all above this product," with a lineup comparable to its six-title PS2 launch selection. The PSP will break unclose a new sector of the market, he said, competing les with Nintendo's Game stripling Advance and focusing more closely upon an older demographic, with more coin to spend and more diverse interests.

With regard to the awaited releases of Microsoft and Sony's next-generation solaces Jenson echoed the conventional wisdom. "What we hear," he said, direct the eyes like a 2006 launch for Sony's relieve from distress and Microsoft targeting late 2005 although "competitive and technology forces will ultimately determine when those things happen." He continued with a hardly any predictions about the type of games we'll be seeing upon the next generation consoles -- the expression of emotion in 3D will become a great deal of more effective, he said, and the common trend towards more open, expansive, persistent game worlds will continue.

While all the talk of next-generation cheers is certainly exciting, Jenson also pointed on the outside that EA made a mistake in letting advance of the PlayStation market too early. EA's PSX software support tapered down from 30 titles in a year to single 5 between 2000 and 2002 a period during which the PSX was still moving hardware and software. Instead of making that mistake again, EA plans to continue supporting the PlayStation 2 well into the lifespan of the nearest generation of consoles.

Jenson's presentation pointed on the outside some remarkable figures on the increase of the PS2 installed base. When the North American PSX installed base was at the same horizontal the PS2 presently occupies, about 25 million units its price point was already down to $99 nearly half what the PS2 popularly sells for. After dropping again to $49 the PSX obviously managed to hold fast selling, and Jensen predicted a similar lifespan for the PS2 "We'll still be talking about PlayStation 2 in 2010" he said (echoing similar novel comments by Take-Two's Jeffrey Lapin), and EA plans to still be producing software for it.

All the talk of next-generation relieve from distress development eclipsed much discussion of the PC While this looks like a perennial suggestion each time a new generation of encourages comes around, Jenson proposed that the PC may eventually have had its day. "The major innovation, and what brought our business into mainstream entertainment, was the living room" he explained. "Once you brought the solace into the living room, all of a unlooked for it becomes entertainment, as oppos to something that's sitting in the library or a certain quantity of corner room. Increasingly, we'll be seeing [development] migrate to the soothes and away from the PC"

While PC enthusiasts may certainly disagree with that contention, EA is growing big enough to lead the industry where it will to more [i]or[/i] less degree. We'll continue to tread in the steps of its movements assiduously in the coming year.

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