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1-EA in Online Gaming
1-EA in Online Gaming
1-EA in Online Gaming
Situation Analysis
A. The key issue that will impact EA's ability to thrive is maximizing its game's sales,
irrelevant of the console platform dynamics.
B. Key Success Factors:
B1) Then:
1. Licenses with branded franchises
2. Large portfolio of successful game franchises
3. Platform agnostic approach, which made games available across all consoles
4. Innovation - aggressive move to online gaming (nascent market)
B2) Now:
1. Continued licenses with brand franchises
2. Big market share in growing online gaming segment
3. Improved gaming experience (customer experience, technology improvement)
II.
III.
Recommendation
We recommend EA to maintain a platform agnostic approach (option C), albeit at higher costs,
expecting access to the complete online-gaming market.
The reasons supporting this recommendation are as follows:
1. The concern should be accessing a larger market size, and thereby increase sales.
2. It is too early to accurately determine the long-term status of online gaming market.
Besides, choosing sides, with either Sony PS2 or Xbox, translates into ceding too much
control to one of them. This could result in longer-term problems.
3. EA already dealing with a large portfolio of franchises across multiple consoles. Hence,
the additional complexity should be well within their resources and capabilities.
Risks/Limitations of implementing the same include:
1. To release games on Xbox, fixed costs increase by $1million per game (porting costs).
2. Risk of compromising homogenous gaming experience for consumers across multiple
consoles/platforms.
The console software market is too fragmented for any individual console software player, even
EA, to impact the platform wars without hurting its sales badly, as Xbox has a significant market
share and an attractive Xbox Live platform. One could argue software developers should unite to
make Microsoft yield and propose better conditions. However, using prisoner's dilemma as the
logical basis, it is prudent to maintain a platform-neutral or platform-agnostic approach.