| Electronic Arts | |
| |
| Type | Public |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Defunct | |
| Headquarters | Redwood City, California, USA |
| Products | |
| Parent Company | N/A |
| Website | http://www.ea.com |
Electronic Arts is the name of a video game publisher and developer. It is currently the biggest video game publisher in the United States. Founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, EA now has a reputation among many as being a big, aggressive, little-man crushing corporation. This is mostly due to reports of the long hours of work they impose on their development teams, the acquisition and closing of small companies, and buying of exclusive sports licenses to prevent competition.
Originally, they published historically significant games such as M.U.L.E. for the Atari 800. Today, they have become a developer of many movie tie-ins and hugely successful sports games.
They also own Pogo.com, a game website.
Departments
Electronics Arts has specific brand-names that it publishes its games under.
EA Games
EA Games logo
Any non-sports games are published under the EA Games department. This includes the many movie-based games like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Some notable output published under this department include Burnout 3: Takedown, Battlefield 2, The Sims and Medal of Honor.
EA Sports
EA Sports logo
One of EA's most successful brands, EA Sports is the home to their best-selling sports titles. The most notable of which is the Madden NFL series. This department holds exclusive license to the NFL, ESPN information, and College Football. A game for each major sport (NBA Live series, FIFA series, etc.) is put out every year, sometimes with only minor improvements.
EA Sports Big
EA Sports Big logo
Any extreme sports games, or unrealistc arcade versions of popular sports, are under the EA Big umbrella. Notable games are: SSX Tricky, NBA Street V3 and NFL Street.
Buyouts
One of EA's main business strategies relies on aggressively buying out other game developers mainly to acquire said developers intellectual property. EA has then historically gone on to ruin the very IPs they so wanted by forcing the developers to quickly pump out lackluster sequels to critically acclaimed franchises.
Ubisoft
On December 20, 2004 EA announced that it would purchase a 19.9 percent share of Ubisoft. Costing an estimated $85 million to $100 million, this move was seen by many to be the first steps to a full acquisition. Ubisoft went on record declaring the bid a hostile act and has since taken steps to prevent a full buyout by EA.
Game developers EA has purchased
- Mythic Entertainment (expected to be finalized in EA's second quarter of fiscal 2007) [1]
- Digital Illusions CE (D.I.C.E.) (2006)
- Westwood Studios (1998)
- Bullfrog Productions (1995)
- Origin Systems (1992)