Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except the entire idea that games should be promoted like hollywood movies is _exactly_ what precipitated this whole downfall. Games are not movies nor should they be like movies. Personally I hope there are tons of layoffs. The entire industry needs to be rinsed clean and refreshed, especially the US gaming industry.
Would you mind saying more about this? Why does promoting games as if they were movies is an issue? Is this just about the rising development costs of AAA games, or is there something else here that you're alluding to?
EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
261–270 of 461 posts
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#262Videogamers have fickle tastes that can change on a whim, and the entire dev stack for game development is becoming more accessible and commoditized, creating massive amounts of competition. Even more so when it comes to squeezing beloved franchises out. Multiple franchises have died under EA (Sim City anyone?), and one of the top franchises EA owns basically has morphed into a "Middle East combat simulator" (Battlef…
> Multiple franchises have died under EA (Sim City anyone?) Cities: Skylines managed to fill that gap, but then C:S2 was an utter dud on release. I think part of the problem is that we've reached a point where the players expect each individual citizen to be simulated, with the traffic to match, but doing that creates such a massive demand on CPU power that even a modern monster system will struggle once your city re…
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#263Unless some of that cash is staying on the balance sheet, they will NOT be investing in growth and innovation.
PE is not what I normally think of when I think of innovation and (non-financially engineered) growth.
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#264Found this: > The investors are betting that AI-based cost cuts will significantly boost EA’s profits in the coming years, people involved in the transaction told the Financial Times. It halfway makes sense. EA is priced at current game production costs, but if that goes down, it'll be worth more. The other side of that is that someone might be able to vibe code with "make the next iconic video game franchise in the…
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume the acquisition is mostly about the sports games and Battlefield but EA really is sitting on some fantastic IP: Bioware, Westwood, and Maxis were all great studios.
I think "were" is the correct tense. EA's dictates for SimCity (2013) ended up crashing that franchise entirely, and a decade into The Sims 4, EA has admitted it's planning on endless expansion packs for Sims 4 rather than making a Sims 5, with the community largely debating whether or not the best Sims game is Sims 2 or Sims 3.
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk. Are private equity firms not asking for constant growth? Seems unlikely to me. I think most companies satisfied for being sustainable are probably owned by their original founders or their families, not private equity.
Not necessarily. Private ownership can give you the benefit of operating at a stagnate revenue since it still represents a positive income stream for the owners. This is an impossible status for public ownership as people don’t want a stock that stays at 10usd for multiple subsequent quarters. They see it as an investment. So you either have to offer significant dividends or find a way to show growth. If not, investo…
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Muhammad Bonesaw grew up on Age of Empires, and enjoys(/enjoyed) CoD. They also want to use it to shape global perspective. I think signs are good, or at least less-bad.
Interesting - how do you imagine that he would use the likes of CoD to shape global perspective?
That said, given Saudi Arabia's whole vibe, one can't expect that angle to go all that well for anyone else's representation (Women, Israelis, LBGTQ+ folk...)
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t think EA could get more evil but here we are. I remember when they were the good guys. I’d see that EA logo on my Commodore 64 load up and I knew I was in for something amazing like Archon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark
Company is worth of 50 billion, while everyone hates it these days?
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#269Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large exe…
Does EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past. The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners
#270Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large exe…
EA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.
And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.