EA "confident" for strong 2010
Plus Euro publishing boss looks ahead to "super successful" Star Wars MMO
Following a year in which Electronic Arts regained the publishing top spot in Europe last year, the company's regional boss - Dr Jens Uwe Intat - has told GamesIndustry.biz that he's confident of a successful 2010.
"The year's starting with four strong titles from us - Army of Two: 40th Day and Mass Effect 2 were in January," he said. "Next it's Dante's Inferno, and then in March we've got Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
"That's four strong titles in the first quarter of the calendar year, so you bet we're confident that it's going to be a strong year overall. Certainly for ourselves."
He added that he's also looking forward to another milestone release for the company - the BioWare-developed MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, a game which he believes could be well-positioned to compete effectively with the genre's behemoth, Activision Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
"First of all, I totally agree that World of Warcraft has been a very impressive product success in the last several years," he said. "It has a very strong and loyal community.
"Secondly I agree that quite a few companies, including ourselves with Warhammer Online, have tried to dethrone the game with different approaches - all trying to have some innovation on gameplay in order to lure players away from World of Warcraft.
"The reason why I'm much more confident in Star Wars being able to do that then Warhammer, for example, is that while Warhammer has been a very interesting product from a games point of view, I think the Star Wars franchise has such a huge fanbase across the planet that people being able to play that as an MMO... it will be a totally different reason for buying than just buying another massively multiplayer online game.
"We do feel that the title has a very strong proposal, and we're very confident that it will be super-successful."
He also noted that while the game's biggest challenge would be retaining its subscriber base over time, he thought that BioWare's experience in building "longer-term franchises" would stand it in good stead.
The full interview with Jens Uwe Intat is available now.