posted on 11. 11. 2009 by Lori in Industry, News, Wii, ea

EA frustrated with the Wii

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EA is a bit sad. Not just because they’re still bleeding money like crazy and had to let 1,300 people go, but also because their Wii games aren’t selling as well as they’d like.

John Riccitiello was whining about this in yersterday’s conference call:

“To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share. Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like. We are building the products that I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third-party platform.

Wii is where we are missing it and so I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out multiplatform because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii.”

Here, Mr. Riccitiello, have some cheese with that. Ok, so here’s the deal: No one cares about your dumb Wii games. Keep making EA Sports Active and you’ll be golden. Every dollar wasted on another on-rails shooter is a dollar that could’ve gone towards someone’s salary — preferably one of those people you just fired.

Yes, there are 50 million Wii consoles out there, but most people have theirs either hacked or are busy deciding between “Raving Rabbids” and “Carnival Games” to play with their grandmother, bless her heart.

Oh, in totally unrelated EA news, you know what else is going to bomb, and bomb hard? “Skate 3″. Fuck “Skate 3″.

Thanks to GI.biz for the transcript.