Origin users are reporting unauthorized game purchases on their accounts, pointing to EA’s platform falling victim to a hack. The reports first surfaced on Reddit and it is unclear as to how widespread this issue is. It could be that just a handful of users had poor passwords and had their accounts hacked, but another major and possible scenario is that Origin itself got hacked as a whole and that the hackers are now using their financial details to make unauthorized purchases. Some are looking at the November hacking of Origin, which was made by group DerpTrolling. They reported to have stolen information from over 1.7 million Origin accounts, but nobody really took this threat seriously. Maybe the group actually did get some valuable information, and after seeing the success of Lizard Squad and their hacking of Playstation Network and Xbox LIVE, have decided to take the next step. The…
electronic arts
SWToR remains a challenge after Electronic Arts (EA) releases Quarterly report
Electronic Arts (EA) recently released their regular quarterly report that offered a glimpse on the performance of the mega-company. While overall, EA performed extremely well, a closer look of their released documentation revealed that SWToR didn’t contribute to the company’s overall performance. In specific: Net Revenue For the three months ended September 30, 2014 , net revenue was $990 million and increased $295 million , or 42 percent , as compared to the three months ended September 30, 2013 . This increase was driven by a $476 million increase in revenue primarily from the FIFA and Battlefield franchises, and Titanfall. This increase was partially offset by a $181 million decrease in revenue primarily from the SimCity, Crysis and Dead Space franchises, and Star Wars: The Old Republic . Service and Other Revenue For the three months ended September 30, 2014 , service and other revenue was $454 million , primarily…
EA Opens new Star Wars Website
Leland Chee (Manager of the Holocron over at Lucasfilm Story Group), posted an interesting tweet Yesterday. Unknown to most people, Electronic arts, have now started a website for all thing related to upcoming Star Wars video games in development by EA. Over a year ago, EA and our partners at Lucasfilm and Disney reached a multi-year, multi-title exclusive licensing agreement for the creation of new Star Warsgames aimed at core gamers across consoles, PC, mobile and tablets. Today, we’re excited to be launching a new Web Site for EA’s Star Wars games. StarWars.ea.com is a singular destination for Star Wars fans to learn more about the exciting new games in development at EA. Right now, you can find new videos and the latest on Star Wars™ Battlefront™ from DICE, and Star War™: The Old Republic™ from BioWare. This will be pretty interesting to follow for now on. You can check…
EA Should Use These Star Wars Games as Inspiration
We all know that EA is a big leader in Star Wars video games. With the new canon, we know that they can also do pretty much anything they want in terms of story and put a Star Wars spin on it. But is this really the best way to do it? Are we steering too far away from what made us all fans in the first place- the original story and movies? What if new Star Wars games complemented the new movies coming out? cinelinx tells us what they think EA should use as inspiration for future Star Wars games: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Star Wars Starfighter for the PS2 Star Wars Republic Commando Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (no complaints from us on this one) They go on in their article to explain why they think these games are the best representation…
50 EA Titles to be Taken Offline Next Month Including Star Wars: Battlefront
Big news from EA this week about online service updates coming as soon as June 30th. EA will be pulling more than 50 titles with online multiplayer components and it could affect some games you still play. This can be frustrating news to those of us who still play some of these titles. There are several games that I still play with friends or family and several that are really only fun in multiplayer format so it’s a real let-down that they are pulling them offline. I can respect and understand that an online game will have a lifespan and that it is not reasonable to expect them to be supported forever but it’s still sad to hear this news. Check out the list of 50 titles yourself and see if any of your favorite games are on there. Take note of the following Star Wars games on the list:…
Electronic Arts Names Amy Hennig Creative Director For ‘Star Wars’ Project
Steve Papoutsis, the Vice President and General Manager at Visceral Games had some important news to share recently. Amy Hennig was named creative director for their upcoming ‘Star Wars’ Project. Here is some of what he had to say about the announcement:
EA Won’t Be ‘Worst Company in America’ for the 3rd Year in a Row
Remember when we told you it looked like EA might take home the prize of ‘Worst Company in America’ for the 3rd year in a row? Well, it looks like good news for them that they fell out of the running in round one. While they may have made some mistakes this year, it looks like there are some other companies who have people upset enough to bump them up in the rankings, sparing EA this year. In the first round, Time Warner Cable beat EA with a 51.2% vs. 48.8% margin. It was a close one but as a TWC customer, I can’t say I am surprised. In past years, I was a huge TWC fan but recent months have told a different story and now their impeding merge with Comcast just pushes them more negative territory. As Consumerist explains: In the narrowest margin of victory since 2011, when BP beat…
EA Plans to Model Star Wars Games after Batman Arkham Series
Reports and interviews coming out say EA plans to model their Star Wars games after the Batman Arkham series. “We’re not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film,” says EA boss. EA is telling the fans we shouldn’t expect the upcoming Star Wars games to be based directly on the Star Wars films themselves. Instead, EA will approach it in the same way that Warner Bros. did with the Batman Arkham series. Basically they are not planning to build a game that copies any particular storyline of the films. Instead, they are going to take the core roots of the IP and create an additional interactive experience that fans can enjoy. This is interesting because it also gives the more flexibility with what they do with the games. Remember EA acquired the Star Wars license exclusively last May and it will last for at…
EA May Take Title for “Worst Company in America” for 3rd Time
It’s that time of year again and The Consumerist is having their annual contest for the “Worst Company in America”. And funny enough, it looks like Electronic Arts may take the title for the 3rd year in a row. The process of nominations started already and will continue through 5 pm ET on Thursday, March 13. No company except EA has ever managed to win the prize two years in a row (2012, 2013) as we brought you previously. And now it looks like they could take it for a 3rd year. The winner of this prestigious title gets the Golden Poo award. Both times that EA won the prize, Bank of American was next in line. No offense to any readers who may work for BoA but I’m not too surprised. So will EA win out again and remain the reigning champion or will some other bad American company take the…
Could There Be a New Open-World Star Wars Game From EA?
Could there be a new open-world Star Wars game in the making from EA? All signs point to yes when we look at various job postings from the studio in Canada. An animation director job posting from last month showed that EA Canada has a Star Wars team working on what they call “a major new next gen open world action game.”
EA Will Not Be Making Star Wars Movie Games
If you were wondering if EA is going to make any games about the Star Wars movies, we now have an official answer.
EA Wants to Create Jaw Dropping Star Wars Games
According to recent stories, EA wants to refresh the Star Wars game license and create games that will make “your jaw drop”. For Star Wars game fans, this is good news but will they really pull off this hefty goal? One can only hope, right? “The most important thing for me is that we take the Star Wars license and come up with games where peoples’ jaws drop,” said Patrick Soderlund of EA games to Polygon. “We need to do with this what [Batman: Arkham Asylum] did for the Batman license.” The first game they are set to work with is Star Wars: Battlefront, a game that many fans have been waiting a very long time to see happen. Soderlund says the DICE team will have access to this work. While they could not tell Polygon much about the game, it’s still great news to know it is in development and…
Frank Gibeau Interview with Venture Beat
Frank Gibeau talks with Venture Beat on EA’s digital ecosystems, Star Wars games, and Titanfall (interview part two) with information about EA’s future, games in the works and more. As you may already know, Electronic Arts has some very large properties in the video game world. FIFA Soccer, Titanfall, Star Wars Battlefront and more are examples of some of the big titles we have coming from EA this fall. Venture Beat talked to Gibeau about this and more in part 2 of this great interview. See a snippet here: GamesBeat: It seems like you guys, as EA, can believe in a digital ecosystem around games. If you’re Disney, you can believe in transmedia. You can do toys and films and whatever. You guys have the Need for Speed film. When do you step outside that? Gibeau: We have an embarrassment of riches in terms of intellectual properties at EA. Then, you couple…
TIME talks about SWTOR and EA
As we reported this week, EA just got the exclusive rights to publish all Star Wars games in the future. As one of the largest video game company in existence, it’s likely EA had to fork out loads of cash to get this exclusive deal. EA will now have the rights to produce Star Wars games for the “core gaming audience” whereas Disney, who canned developer LucasArts just last month, will retain the rights to design Star Wars games for mobile, social and online gamers. So now that the big news has been announced, it seems everyone has an opinion and Time doesn’t seem to be taking a positive stance on this new relationship. Here’s a snippet from a piece they did that discusses the topic and SWTOR at length: And yet EA has a spotty track record when it comes to franchise tie-ins. Whereas handing a major property off…
EA Didn’t Ruin BioWare Games, Says Dr. Zeschuk
We have all heard the rumors: EA ruined SWTOR, EA ruined BioWare, EA destroyed BioWare games. But one of the Doctors is speaking out against these rumors. BioWare co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk says he had a hand and a voice in how things operated at EA/Bioware. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the doctor says: Zeschuk also rejects any notion of Electronic Arts being a negative influence on BioWare. “They don’t second-guess you, they don’t say you shouldn’t do that,” he explains. “We had complete creative control over a lot of it; some fans didn’t like some of it and some of it was experimental, quite frankly.” Well, it’s a sign of honor to own up to your own mistakes, right? It’d be easy for BioWare to blame EA for their lackluster year(or two) but instead he admits that they had too much money and possible too much free reign and they made…
EA Responds to “Worst Company in America” Poll; Makes History
EA Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore, has responded to what looks to be EA’s second year in a row winning The Consumerist’s ‘Worst Company in America’ award. Their stock might be on the rise but there are clearly still some issues that EA needs to work out. EA is the first company in the contest’s history to win this award twice (not the type of award you want to brag about, right?) Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore had some things to say about this development: “Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” Moore asks. “I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.” He then goes on to explain how last year they won the…
EA’s Survival Has Been “A Rare Feat”
We’ve talked before here about the ups and downs of EA. They’ve had a rough couple of years and those shareholders who are still holding on saw stock drop from around $25 back in the winter of 2011 to just about $11 last August. Now they’re back up to around $18 a share. So those who have stayed in it for the long haul are seeing their efforts pay off. At last week’s Game Developer’s Conference, GamesIndustry International talked to EA president Frank Gibeau (a possible replacement for Riccitiello) about the state of EA: “It’s a dynamic industry. At one moment social is the hottest thing in the history of man, and the next minute it’s not. One minute console is dead, the next minute console is incredible. There’s no market in Russia, Brazil, China, and now we’re seeing some of the largest markets in the world in the emerging market. The…
EA Pays Probst Seven Figures, Looks for New CEO
CEO John Riccitiello recently resigned from Electronic Arts but executive chairman Larry Probst is reportedly taking the reins until a suitable replacement is found. But his temporary position of two roles will not come cheap- As reported by GameSpot, an EA filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week revealed that Probst will be paid an annualized salary of $1.03 million for the duration of the search for a new CEO. In addition to the seven-figure salary, Probst stands to earn an additional one-time bonus for his work from the Board of Directors for his temporary stint as executive chairman of the company. Of course, Probst will be abstaining from any discussion the board has on that particular topic since it would be a conflict of interest. He is also foregoing his board of directors cash retainer fees (which were $100,000 for the company’s fiscal 2012) for the duration…
EA Financial Call
Electronic Arts had a financial call yesterday. Unfortunately there weren’t much news about how SWTOR are doing, other then early indications for SWTOR F2P transition were positive. In other news coming out of the financial call, Electronic Arts said its loss for the third quarter narrowed from a year ago, mostly on lower expenses. Adjusted profit, which excludes special items, beat estimates by a penny, although revenues fell short of expectations. Moving ahead, the company detailed its outlook for the fourth quarter and revised its full year guidance. Electronic Arts third-quarter loss narrowed to $45 million or $0.15 per share from $205 million or $0.62 per share last year. Excluding items, earnings dropped to $0.57 per share from $0.99 per share last year. On average, 26 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.56 per share for the quarter. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude special items. Revenues for the third quarter dropped to $922 million from…
Ben Cousins Paying to Win Talks about F2P Game Model
In November 2009, EA hit the headlines when the BATTLEFIELD HEROES team made sweeping changes to their in-game economy and virtual item catalogue that many felt would completely destroy the game, as Ben Cousins explains in his “Paying to Win” talk that covers the free to play gaming model and if and how it works. While consumer press, forum users and players claimed that the new game model ruined BATTLEFIELD HEROES, economic statistics would show EA otherwise. Despite the predictions of destruction, over a year on, BATTLEFIELD HEROES continues to be a powerhouse in the free-to-play space, with nearly 7 million registered users, no declining trend in active users, and it long-term future assured. So, what happened? In this talk, Ben Cousins, General Manager of Easy (the EA studio behind BATTLEFIELD HEROES) takes us through the story of this controversy. Through the development of BATTLEFIELD HEROES and the early performance…
Is Electronic Arts Up for Sale?
Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq:EA) is “quietly exploring” opportunities for it to be sold to private equity firms, according to a report by the New York Post. According to these reports, EA is talking to two different potential companies about a sale. Both are private equity companies- KKR & Co. L.P (NYSE: KKR) and Providence Equity Partners, a major shareholder in ZeniMax Media, an EA competitor. So what does this mean for EA? Honestly, it’s too early to tell. One source said “it’s early days” for any deliberation but then another source said that EA has “made it known they’d do a deal at $20 a share.” Either way, we’re basing all of this on rumor and not on any solid facts at this time. EA’s stock has struggled a bit lately, dropping 37% in the past year. However, they are still a leader in the industry and some might say that drop is just a…
EA Claims SWTOR Did Better than WoW in First Month
In the quarterly earnings call for Electronic Arts, they announced they had 1.7 million active subscribers to SWTOR. These are some pretty huge numbers but just what do they mean? These figures count the number of players who have subscribed to the game past the first month free trial you get with purchase. This means that Star Wars: The Old Republic has gained more followers in the first month than Blizzard Entertainment’s immensely popular World Of Warcraft (WoW) did during the same period. (via Hexus) Of course, these are just early figures and in the SWTOR vs WoW arena, Blizzard has a 7-year head start. The true test of MMORPG brilliance will come when we see where SWTOR is in the long run. Where will they be after 6 months? What about a year from release? What about 7 years? The true test of success lies in whether or not…
Mass Effect 3 Release Date
March 9, 2012 is a date that RPG gamers are foaming at the mouth for. BioWare is doing all that they can to make the wait even more difficult as they released a brand new movie and screenshots of Mass Effect 3. This game has got to be one of the most anticipated games of the coming year and simply looks incredible. BioWare knows exactly what they are doing in whetting our appetite with this little featurettes, don’t they? The game will be available on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 and will come in regular and a special edition. The special edition was revealed as well and will be called the Mass Effect 3 N7 Collector’s Edition. The N7 will have exclusive content in the game. It also will include a limited edition Dark Horse Comic, art book and soundtrack. Finally, they will also include an N7 patch and lithograph…
Does BioWare Booth at GamesCom Pics Hint at Huge Surprise?
The excitement level is at a fever pitch in Germany as BioWare gets set to show off SWTOR booth that would rival even the biggest MMO universe. (Okay, maybe not that large but it is really big this year!) The pics that have come out thus far are absolutely breathtaking and absolutely stink of a huge reveal. It would not surprise me in the least if BioWare came out with something a bit unexpected. Could BioWare be setting us up for a huge surprise twist or preview? Stephen Reid tweeted these pics revealing the immense size and scope of the SWTOR booth at GamesCom this year. It certainly looks to me like they have something bigger in mind than a typical booth. Either way, this booth looks like it will be the star of the GamesCom show. This is especially true of the MMO crowd. We all know that in…