December 4, 2004
Written by Shaun McCracken
Is it just me, or has EA (Electronic Arts) lost it's touch with a few of it's games
released this year? We've seen mediocre offerings such as Catwoman, Harry Potter And
The Prisoner Of Azkaban and GoldenEye Rogue Agent (hmm, there's a trend here), and there
really aren't as many big offerings this fall than there was in fall 2003. Sure, Burnout 3
was excellent, and Madden is almost always a guarunteed crowd-pleaser, but a lot of
what was released in fall 2004 isn't paticulary making any changes in existing franchises.
Need For Speed Underground 2 is just building upon it's previous design and tacking on
a free roaming envrionment (which is hardly new or innovative), Def Jam Vendetta: Fight For NY
is still pretty much the same fighting game as it was in 2003, and The Urbz is basically the Sims
with "flava". Last year, we saw drastic changes to known EA franchises. SSX3 was more open
than previous SSX games (and at least at that time, free-roaming environments didn't
seem so cliche), the Need For Speed series ditched the exotics for sport compacts and adopted
the nighttime streetracing scene, and we saw an original new game in the form of Freedom Fighters.
So has EA been doing worse in 2004, or does it just appear that way?
Let's take a look at the numbers, shall we. I have taken the average score from
all EA games released in 2003 and 2004 for all platfroms (including PC) from the
"main scores" provided by GameRankings. Here are the figures
I came up with below:
|
|
| Average Main Score For All EA Games Released In 2003*: |
79.82% |
| Average Main Score For All EA Games Released In 2004*: |
79.76% |
| Difference Of Scores: |
0.06% |
* Based upon collected scores from GameRankings.com
Based upon the numbers, EA is actually almost at the same point as they were last year
in terms of critical ratings. Even games such as Catwoman and GoldenEye Rogue Agent
hasn't really seemed to have deviated EA's overall standings critcally. And if you estimate
those numbers, EA has scored an average of 80% for it's overall releases for 2003 and 2004.
While that pretty much debunks my theory on EA having a bad year, it's also showing that
EA is showing consistency in the overall quality of it's products. Sure, 80% is pretty much
a "B" grade, and having that for two years in a row may seem like a bad thing, it doesn't really mean that every
game they made is a "B"-grade game. Some are better (Burnout 3, SSX3) and some are worse (Catwoman, Bionicle).
Actually an overall 80% grade for all games released by a third-party company is pretty
good, and very few thrid-party companies can pull this off.
But it's not all about the critical scores. Sure, they are useful in detrmining how
well a game is (or in this case, an overall score of a companies' offering), but when
you actually look at the library of games, it's hard not to notice much that jumps out at you.
Like I said earlier, this fall for EA seems rather run-of-the-mill, with Burnout 3
being the exception, as it's the only game that has made real drastic changes. This fall
is pretty much sequels, license based games, and the yearly sports game. And it's not
just the fall season that has looked like this, it's pretty much been like this all
year for EA. 007: Everything Or Nothing (as great as it is), is license based (as well as Catwoman
and HP: Prisoner Of Azkaban), and there was a baseball, boxing and college football game released before fall.
It seems like the only big thing they had for us this fall was Xbox LIVE support, and
that's something they should have done last year.
I'm not saying every game EA has released this year is medicore or crap, but it really
doesn't seem as diversified as it did in 2003, or as original (at least for them). Is it possible that
EA could be heading in a downward spiral in 2005 by not having much new product (also
knwoing that there may be sequels to Burnout and SSX in 2005), or will they stay the "80% average" course?
Let's hope they pull at least one new trick out of their hat in 2005.
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