EA was wrong to ride PS3 & Xbox 360, CEO says

During yesterday's EA investor's meeting, fresh-faced CEO John Riccitiello lamented the company's unbalanced commitment to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Riccitiello spoke candidly about fiscal 2007, which he described as "the toughest year in the company's history," reports Next-Gen. "One of the biggest challenges, of course, was that not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo that they've shown with their wand controller and their Wii," observed Riccitiello, who admitted that by focusing on PS3 and Xbox, EA was on the "wrong horse". The pledge to Nintendo was a late bid.

As of March, EA had the largest third-party market share on Wii, but profits were still stunted by relatively few titles and not a single original IP. Riccitiello did reaffirm a company-wide initiative to cease using Wii as a shovelware graveyard and to focus on new IPs; the same applies for all platforms supported by the company. With new franchises like Army of Two, Crysis, Playground, Rock Band -- oh, and "A Steven Spielberg Game: Blocks" -- EA hopes to get stagnant share prices bubbling upward again (shares were down yesterday). If only it was as simple as a wave of that magic wand...