Spore

EA: Quality overrides ship time

CEO John Riccitiello drives home his focus on quality for EA titles

"I would say without hesitation that our quality is going to be up this year versus the prior year," Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said in a Tuesday earnings call.

Riccitiello has made it a very public priority to up the quality of EA's titles. A recent review score average of EA's titles was 77 percent, but Riccitiello said at an analyst meeting in February that he wants EA to exceed 80 percent by fiscal 2011.

He reiterated the intended focus on quality during an earnings call Tuesday. "I would say without hesitation that our quality is going to be up this year versus the prior year. I would say without hesitation that our ship timing is going to be improved versus the prior year," he predicted.

But chasing higher quality may cause sacrifices in another important area: timeliness. "If I had to tell you which will give, ship time will give before quality," he said. "We're making big improvements on timeliness, but there's still more work to do."

Games on the slate for fiscal 2009 include games from typically well-reviewed game makers (and recent EA acquisitions) Pandemic and Bioware. Pandemic has Mercenaries 2 and Saboteur in the pipeline, while BioWare has the RPG Dragon Age in the works.

Other promising titles from EA include Mirror's Edge from DICE and Spore from Maxis.

Courtesy of Next Generation.

May 14, 2008

This video player requires Flash 9 Player or later. Please download the latest Flash Player.
The Knowledge
Spore

Genre: Strategy
Expected release date: 09/07/2008
Published by: Electronic Arts
Developed by: Maxis
Designer: Will Wright
Multiplayer Modes:
Offline
1 player SOLO
Latest Articles About This Game
Ripten writes: Spore box art announced … uhhhh what can I say … it's very colorful,...
PC News from N4G  -  Jul 23, 2008
Will Wright's Spore is aiming to set precedents in many ways, and it's also set to break a...
PC News from N4G  -  Jul 17, 2008
Creator makes gamers even more full of themselves.
PC News from N4G  -  Jul 14, 2008
MCV: New title can have same 'long tail' effect as Will Wright's last smash, says publisher
PC News from N4G  -  Jul 10, 2008
Kotaku: Last month Electronic Arts contacted me to see if I would be willing to create a Spore...
PC News from N4G  -  Jul 1, 2008