Arts Class

Other companies may have been gaining ground recently, but there's still no doubt that Electronic Arts is at the top of the pile when it comes to third-party publishers. In the past, that's in large part been down to the success of long-running series such as FIFA and Need for Speed - which has led to criticisms of EA by hardcore gamers and industry analysts alike.

But now it seems there's a shift in EA's outlook and a new, more important focus on original IP. The publisher has also had to realign its strategy following the launch of the next-gen consoles, as Gerhard Florin, executive VP of international publishing, explains in this exclusive interview.

Read on to find out Florin's take on the new machines, the importance of owning IP and why he believes things could be on the up for the industry as a whole.

Gerhard Florin: It should be balanced, but that's correct. We do focus very strongly on our existing IPs and we try to invent and bring more and more new IPs into the market.

As I said, it's about balance. We're not turning away from the existing successful IPs, but owned IPs are much more valuable because we don't have to pay licence fees and we don't have to face the risk of losing the licence.

That's why if you have a Need for Speed, a Sims, a Medal of Honour, all that - we can do what we want, especially if you think in terms of in-game advertising, of other ways to exploit merchandising.

If it's your own IP, you have to ask yourself about what you're going to do; if it's licenced IP you have to ask yourself and somebody else, which makes it more complicated.

You'll only be able to tell in two years' time. Look at the price in two years' time, and then you can say whether it's too high. I don't know where it will be, but then you can judge whether it's high or not too high.

Usually for the first movers it's more a supply than a demand problem - there aren't enough because you can't make enough, there's not the demand. Given what you get with the machine - the components, the Blu-ray, the gaming, the Cell processor - the price is understandable.

Whether it's too high or not the consumer has to decide, but I don't think for the first year the price will be a problem which holds anything back.

Worldwide, or in Europe?

I think they have a chance, but it's much harder.

Yes, the rival consoles aren't offering something the same, they're offering something different - so the consumer all of a sudden gets a choice. You can go for the Wii, the fun, entertainment part, or more for the online part with the Xbox 360, or more for the high tech part with Sony.

So you have three pretty much distinct positionings and offerings which will definitely grow the market enormously, but of course will create maybe a different split.

Sony might really increase their numbers, their units, as they've expected, and still lose market share, because Nintendo finds so many new consumers. If you add that, the total pie is much bigger and everybody's happy - but the share is much more balanced.

Yes. Sony has a really leading market share in Europe compared to the US, because it's Microsoft's home turf. Sony comes from a much higher base. If you come from 80 or 70 per cent, you can lose more than if you come from 50 per cent - that's just the nature of the numbers.

That's correct.

I wouldn't make any judgements within the next two years. The first two years will clearly be an open race, everybody will do very well. I believe all three are worth supporting in different ways.

Something like Harry Potter is a very clear candidate to lead on the Wii - we will offer it on the other platforms as well, but here we'll concentrate on the Wii.

Shooters like Medal of Honour, Black, we will clearly concentrate on PlayStation 3 because we need Cell processor power. Then we've got more strategic, online-orientated games that we concentrate more on 360.

So we'll have to look at every franchise, at the consumers, and then make a decision about our lead platform.

Firstly, 360 had a head start of 10 million units - that helped, obviously. They had a head start of two years Xbox Live knowledge, and that's a very complex matter; PlayStation Home looks fantastic, but two years of customer building, of knowledge, is a lot. Sony will catch up, but it takes a bit a of time. The online field and the installed base are advantages Microsoft has in hand.

The development community has a lot of experience with 360, so there will be a wider offering on 360, because more people have worked on it compared to PlayStation 3. That suggests their platform will be very solid.

But then the high-end studio programmers, they tend to work on the latest technology, and of course the Cell processor has even more power. So I hope it will be a pretty even race, because that's good for us as a platform agnostic player.