EA: Lasky "needs to try de-caf"
Publisher hits back at accusations from former exec that it's "in the wrong business"
An EA spokesperson has responded to recent criticism of the company from former exec Mitch Lasky, saying that Lasky "needs to try de-caf."
Also implying that Lasky is only lashing out because he was turned down for a job at EA, Jeff Brown, EA's head of corporate communications told VentureBeat:
"Mitch needs to try de-caf. It's never easy being turned down for a job, but most people don't spend three years obsessing about it. Since Mitch left EA, Apple invented the iPhone, Facebook evolved to include a gaming platform and EA Mobile became the world leader."
Lasky, a former EA exec who sold his mobile business Jamdat to the publisher in 2005 then left after a year, hit out at EA in a recent post on his blog. The EA Games label has produced more failures than hits, he said, and the EA Sports business is overwhelmed with expensive licensing costs.
"EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again.
"It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another.
"Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's £850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy," he wrote.
Lasky's comments follow EA's lowering of its financial outlook for the year from USD 3.6 - 3.9 billion to USD 3.6 - 3.675 billion.
Doug Creutz of analyst firm Cowen Research commented then: "We continue to think EA has missed the current hardware cycle and is unlikely return to historical operating income margin levels."