John Riccitiello can't go blaming the industry for EA's losses. Maybe if they made some original games once in while instead of rehashed racing and football games that "true gamers" are no longer interested in they might start making a profit again. When the developers learn that taking on movie-based projects requires the game to as good if not better than the movie or the book the screenplay came from. Activision have got the right idea, take a leaf from their book.

@ fenrir5683wo - are you still living in 2007?

I think EA have been doing a very good job recently of producing interesting games and I'm surprised at the loss. They're currently dominating the Wii with some very good games that I've been enjoying a lot, Sims has been performing well on the PC, they've been putting their faith into new IP like Mirror's Edge, Deep Space and Dantes Inferno, Battlefield is still proving to be good, their regular sports games have improved a lot as can be seen with FIFA and Fight Night, and they've been trying to get away from licences (unless they're too good to get rid of).

@ BC

EA are too busy catering for the chav market. Granted FIFA is too good to let go of, even as a non-sports fan if I had a company that had a hold of such a great money maker, I wouldn't let it go, but I think that is their problem. Mirror's Edge looks fantastic, though I haven't played it, that's the sort of game I would like to see more of from them. However, I still don't think blaming the industry looks good, no matter who you are. And if you cater to non-working trogladites who have no intention working for money to pay for they're precious 6,000,000th FIFA production (exagerating a bit of course) they won't get their money back. My opinion is biased, I will admit that. However, they have been utilising the greatness of the Wii and it's movement based controls brilliantly and I credit them for that for giving fanboys another reason to cry and winge because their Xbox or PS3 doesn't do that... yet

"Sweat shop" development is immoral. Just because your having a hard time profit-wise doesn't mean you should abuse underpaid slaves from other countries!

I wouldn't call them underpaid slaves. They're just getting paid a wage that suits their cost of living. No company can survive without some form of outsourcing these days.

I know of people who have moved over to asia to work for companies over their because they can afford cool stuff like apartments with swimming pools in when I can't even get a mortgage yet on my programmers wage in the UK.

EA have not been catering to the chav market at all recently. Unless you only think sports and driving games are for thickos who don't appreciate real games like Battlefield or Deep Space ...oh wait, they're EA games.

And that just proves that they can't help but go for boring 1st/3rd person shooters that have been done before. And basing a game in another one of histories more unflattering periods (also done and done and done before), where nobody won like in any real-life war, is pointless. War games set before guns and tanks are much more interesting and in many ways more challenging. Last EA game I played was LOTR: Return of the King, not reality I know, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is a good example of when EA had good games down and could pull off the movie titles. They just need to branch out more. There is wider market out there and their tunnel vision and inabilty for to change is what is causing there current problems.

However, I sympathise with the mortgage thing as I have similar troubles, but this doesn't justify cheap external labour when it comes to North American based companies.