EA to release their own console - rumour?

Gerard · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:11

Zefan said:
A cheap but non-gimmicky system would fit in nicely.

Ea and cheap don't exactly mesh. These are the same gits having adverts in games and not passing on (even a small fraction) of the savings to the end user. :mad:

slambo69 · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:14

They would have the exclusitivity, but could they afford to lose it. For example by the time they did release it, if they do, there will be dozens of millions of gamers on the current systems who would be potential customers for a few of their games, would they really buy a new system just for that?

I dont think they have any hardware experience either, but they do have peter moore now who has launched 2 consoles.

Zefan · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:16

Gerard said:
Ea and cheap don't exactly mesh. These are the same gits having adverts in games and not passing on (even a small fraction) of the savings to the end user.

It's up to them what content they put in their games and what price they charge.

You don't have to buy the games they put adverts in :\

Sniper123 · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:16

Wonder what EA would call it lol?
EA Box maybe?

manoz · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:17

Sniper123 said:
Wonder what EA would call it lol?
EA Box maybe?

Dreamcast 2? (yunno, since Peter Moore's there now)

Gerard · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:18

Zefan said:
You don't have to buy the games they put adverts in :\

The fact is adverts in 2142 were't announced till very late in the games development and after id preordered it on ea downloader, which is non refundable.

Theyre getting revenue for the adverts, and im near sure a dice employee said something aobut the game not costing as much because of this, that worked out well.

KennyBhoy · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:19

Zefan said:
A cheap but non-gimmicky system would fit in nicely. They could also have exclusivity on LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOADS of games as they own the ip to a lot of stuff.

True but i for one would not buy a EA based console just to play EA games and i doubt many outside America would as it basically breaks down to their Yearly Sports Franchises (NFL,NBA,NHL and MLB) and Need For Speed.......Oh and Sims

barnettgs · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:20

Jokester said:
Looking at their financial performance they're on a par with Nintendo almost so they may have the financial might to enter the market, even if it was the hand held market or something.

No experience of hardware though as far as I'm aware.

Jokester

On par with Nintendo? Nintendo are much bigger than that. In fact, Nintendo is now world's 2nd largest electronic manufacturer behind Sony! Have a look at: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25954

Jokester · 21 Jul 2007 at 00:26

barnettgs said:
On par with Nintendo? Nintendo are much bigger than that. In fact, Nintendo is now world's 2nd largest electronic manufacturer behind Sony! Have a look at: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25954

My opinion was based on EAs turnover of $3b and profits of $500m, compared to Nintendo's $8b turnover and profits of $1.5B, so they're of a similar size, and Nintendo's profits have been driven by the success of the Wii in the past year.

Jokester

drunkenmaster · 21 Jul 2007 at 01:20

you have to love the accuracy, nintendo worlds second largest electronic manufacturer --------- only sony AND panasonic are bigger. they BOTH, TWO OF THEM register sales over 8 times as much. but those sales, sony and panasonic are really a yearly fact where nintendo are very obviously in a massive year.

either way, EA would have a great lineup, say it could manage to get something out late 2008, or call it 2009. we'd have EA hockey, 2009 through 2015, EA random sports game the same. EA are stupidly well known for just rehashing the same stuff over and over and over again with little to no change, using same engine over and over and over. i haven't enjoyed a EA sports title in at least 3-4 years i'd think.

the problem with EA titles is a distictly large portion are rehash "filler" titles. you might buy nhl/nba games, so you can have a few sports games with your console, but you don't buy a console really just to buy the nhl/nfl/nba games. if a console was mainly those games you'd have a ridiculously low number of the AAA titles.

but then, sony and MS made pretty huge mistakes, they don't really make money on the hardware, not for years. theres little point developing the cell, for use in gaming when as before, with the p3 in the xbox, you can use a cheap easily available chip cutting out design costs, manufacturing issues and a massive amount of time.

i think theres space in the market for the "upgradable" console. a small box, more stylish and better than a shuttle, with pretty much just a basic PC in but getting ati or nvidia to go in with a slotable in gfx card thats upgradable at some point.

or something along the lines of a tv/pvr box with a powerful gfx system in, running windows, could run all windows games fine but was as easy as a console.

but honestly, i can't for the life of me see EA being the company to do that at all. just because the MS guy moved over, a top management guy doesn't really care what project he's doing, its just man management, getting the team to do whatever they are doing on time and on budget. the other fairly obvious point to make, do you go out and higher the guy whose pretty much just been fired for losing a billion or two on warranties after dodgey 360 equipment was made under his watch? he took a lot of market share off sony and the ps3, which was good. but a pretty massive screwup under him aswell.

movingtables · 21 Jul 2007 at 01:40

technicaly speaking EA have alread released a console.

IT was the 3DO.

William M. 'Trip' Hawkins III entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_Hawkins

SS-89 · 21 Jul 2007 at 07:44

Im pretty sure though EA are a very big producer, they do not have the same financial capital as microsoft sony and nintendo to invest and sustain a new console division. If for any reason the console (if true) flopped it could seriously cripple them and If I were an EA shareholder I would seriously question the risk involved in such an investment. Anyway its all hypothetical unless we get some sort of announcement.

Joebob · 21 Jul 2007 at 10:13

drunkenmaster said:
but then, sony and MS made pretty huge mistakes, they don't really make money on the hardware, not for years. theres little point developing the cell, for use in gaming when as before, with the p3 in the xbox, you can use a cheap easily available chip cutting out design costs, manufacturing issues and a massive amount of time.

I remember reading that the Cell was designed to lower production costs of future generations of consoles. So whilst it cost them a hell of a lot to develop this time around, it may make it so that they can make a profit from day one on each PS4 sold.

drunkenmaster said:
i think theres space in the market for the "upgradable" console. a small box, more stylish and better than a shuttle, with pretty much just a basic PC in but getting ati or nvidia to go in with a slotable in gfx card thats upgradable at some point.

I can't think of anything worse than an upgradable console tbh. One thing which is putting me off PC gaming more and more is the absolutely stupid hardware specs you need to play the latest games coming out. I currently have a Dell XPS M1710 which cost me over £1400 a little over a year ago. Now when Crysis comes out Im going to have to look at selling it and buying something else if I want to play it! I love the fact that with a console you get what you get and developers learn over time how to get more out of the hardware than you would have thought possible. I doubt any PC games developer has ever really pushed the hardware of the GPU or CPU in a PC to the limits as if they dont have enough power then they just recomend the next card or CPU up in terms of spec.

shiner · 21 Jul 2007 at 10:51

They would have a very interesting line up of games, perhaps they should team up with Sega who have the experience of building consoles would be a great game collection between the pair...

drunkenmaster · 21 Jul 2007 at 10:57

Joebob said:
I remember reading that the Cell was designed to lower production costs of future generations of consoles. So whilst it cost them a hell of a lot to develop this time around, it may make it so that they can make a profit from day one on each PS4 sold.

I can't think of anything worse than an upgradable console tbh. One thing which is putting me off PC gaming more and more is the absolutely stupid hardware specs you need to play the latest games coming out. I currently have a Dell XPS M1710 which cost me over £1400 a little over a year ago. Now when Crysis comes out Im going to have to look at selling it and buying something else if I want to play it! I love the fact that with a console you get what you get and developers learn over time how to get more out of the hardware than you would have thought possible. I doubt any PC games developer has ever really pushed the hardware of the GPU or CPU in a PC to the limits as if they dont have enough power then they just recomend the next card or CPU up in terms of spec.

errm, well firstly, considering 99.9% of people have computers at home, right now a £150 gfx card add on to any cpu released in the last 3 years will give you more gaming power than is available on either console. you don't HAVE to buy a dell, you don't have to buy an expensive prebuilt comp. when you got a new comp you paid money again to MS for another copy of win xp, so thats £50-100 on every comp that you've bought for the last 4-5 years, build your own thats a one off cost. you DO NOT need good mem, a great cpu, a nice pretty tower, flashing fans, cathodes, an over specced psu, a motherboard with 15 thousand usb ports or much of anything to play games. today you could go out get a £50 mobo, a £40 chip, a £40 psu, a £20 case, a £25 hdd, and a £150 gfx card and you can play games in higher res and detail than any console out. hardly expensive.

if the xbox 360 been upgradable, well maybe you could buy it with a base gfx card in for much cheaper, say £100 for a core with some older cheaper gfx card, that would be more than powerful enough for anyone without a high def tv, which is a LOT of people. then in a couple years plug in the current gfx thing for £say i dunno 80, which is all it will cost in two years. for the people that don't get hdtv's buy then, they've saved money, for other people they can afford a 360 now on crappy tv, and upgrade when they've got money for a tv and the card.

the point is, that EA have next to entirely no chance of making a real impact on the market if they bought out a new console that would most likely have no real way of being better than other games. if you want to bring something into a fiercly competitive and expensive market you have to have something the other consoles don't have. the xbox came out and had a pretty huge following with homebrew people due to having a hard drive, something new, got them a pretty big base which has only increased on the 360. the Wii without the wiimote would have sold a grand total of 8 machines. EA would need something new. the ability to have a console-ish machine, that isn't so far behind pc games after 2 years is pretty big.

the only problem i have with consoles is, 4-5 years between models, and 3 of those years they are incredibly old and crap tech, and for the first 2 years they are behind on tech, but the industry still developes a lot of the newer games for consoles anyway.

you can buy a new gfx card say a month after release, sell it a week before the next card is out for probo a £50 loss, if that, then buy the new card. say once a year, for 5 years, is £250, to at ALL times have the very best card in your computer. for the same price as a console.

a modular pc built for use as a console, with upgradability, would mean over that 4-5 year period that the first two years, most of the console games, the big titles hit the pc a little late, then the next 2-3 years the pc games are the better games, out first, looking way better. also modular pc, all the tech's there, its just like being a DELL and building/selling computers, licencing but basically very little developement costs. no manufacturing of parts(cept cases/controllers maybe) just a OS system if they didn't use windows. the ability to add in much more functionality than a 360/ps3, pvr, a proper hard drive, whatever hdd you want so if you want it as a pvr, stick a 500gb drive in, if you just want a console with space for demo's a 60gb drive, bought for cheap through any pc shop.

EDIT:-, as good as the cell is, ok maybe they could reuse it for another generation, or remake it with a lot more cores. its all possible, but its had long term problems, took them longer than they wanted, had horrible yields. it will in 5 years be on a new process, take a long time to get working again. if its got low yields still, then its not "that" cheap for them to produce. intel/amd make chips day in day out, so they are simply experts, with yields and costs that just make the Cell fairly pointless. its this stupid idea that everything on your system has to be insanely powerful to be good for gaming. if i bought a pc for gaming, it would be a 2900/8800 for £300, and a cpu for £50, in a console the money should be the same 60-70% cost on the gfx, 10% cpu 20% hard drive, boxing, software, etc.

movingtables · 21 Jul 2007 at 11:02

So the topic is : EA to release their own console - rumour?

and i post a reply stating theyve already technicaly released a console in the past and no one is interested?

how very bizzare :confused:

SS-89 · 21 Jul 2007 at 11:17

movingtables said:
So the topic is : EA to release their own console - rumour?

and i post a reply stating theyve already technicaly released a console in the past and no one is interested?

how very bizzare

Technicalities

, yes from what you linked it seems the founder of Ea released a console, however, were talking about EA entering the next gen console market which is a completely different ball game, may be why you didn't get many if any responses.

KNiVES · 21 Jul 2007 at 11:22

Would be hugely interesting, maybe they will stop making a hundred Sims, a hundred Medal of Honors, a hundred Fifas.... shove it all on this little console of theirs, and leave the other consoles alone with their hideous copy and paste jobs.

Elston · 21 Jul 2007 at 11:41

Ok, think this has been blown out of proportion because Peter Moore has recently joined them. Heres the original article from which the rumors would appear to have come from.

E3 Exclusive: EA Never Saying Never To A New Hardware Platform

E3 Exclusive: EA Never Saying Never To A New Hardware Platform Speaking with Gamasutra, EA’s new executive vice president and general manager of North American publishing, Frank Gibeau, asked whether the company would ever partner to make a hardware platform again as it did with 3DO, answered with a surprisingly positive “never say never.”

“I worked on (the 3DO),” began Gibeau, “and I’d never say never. I was a product manager on some of the titles, like Shockwave, and Road Rash, so I was part of that team, building the games, so I’m really familiar with what happened."

"I think the challenge that we had with 3DO was platform positioning," he continued. "It was the Swiss Army knife of hardware, and we weren’t really sure what it was supposed to do. I think when we look at our business, what’s vitally important to us is the entertainment and customer connection.”

Clarifying his point, Gibeau continued: “So if there were things like peripherals, sure. We’ve got Boogie coming out with a microphone, and there’s Rock Band. When you look at a fully nailed platform – it’s possible, I wouldn’t say it’s in our top 5 priorities right now, but never say never. We’ll look at any way of presenting what we want to do.”

Source

Joebob · 21 Jul 2007 at 11:42

drunkenmaster said:
...

I know all about the virtues and expense of building your own PC as opposed to buying one pre-built. I needed a laptop and I wanted a decent gaming one which is why I went for the Dell.

My point is really that I don't think the PC upgradability model would work on consoles. Developers know what they have got to work with on a console where as with a PC they have to write in so many variables which can cause bugs, errors and glitches etc. I beleive that developing for consoles leads to some clever development techniques to get the very most out of the hardware as opposed to just writing the next game for the next itteration of hardware to come out. Don't get me wrong I do love PC gaming but if I look back over the past 10 years then I have probably spent ten times on PC hardware what I have spent on consoles and I can honestly say I have enjoyed my console gaming just as much, if not more. I think that PC gaming definately has it's place as the forerunner of pushing technology and we wouldn't be where we are now in console hardware and software without it, but the two are different markets and should remain so IMO.

With regards to the cell, I think the idea was that when you stick multiple cells together then the power grows to quite significant proportions. This is one of the reasons why IBM was involved so that they can bring out more and more powerfull servers by just adding more and more cell processors.