EA's John Riccitiello doesn't mind dishing out the straight talk. In an interview with Mercury News, the EA CEO freely admits that his company failed in projecting the top dog of this current generation of consoles, instead focusing development on Xbox 360 and PS3 titles early on. "One thing that's different is we typically figured out who the market leader was going to be before the start of the cycle and bet with our development resources on that platform," he said. Riccitiello admitted that EA made a bad call, but says the company is now "catching up" and thinks they'll be "fine." He went on further to add that they've "got some incredibly innovative Wii titles" and "incredibly innovative DS titles coming. And so I think that issue's sort of behind us."
With EA being such a big supporter of the previous Xbox and PlayStation consoles, do they think they can gain similar market share on the Wii? Even with Nintendo's tradition of dominating their own console with first-party titles? "Yes," says Riccitiello. "Tomorrow? No. Can I make a big step in that direction this year? Yes. Can I continue to make steps in that pattern? Yes. Does Nintendo want us to do it? Yes. Does the platform set itself up for that to be possible? Yes. So, it requires focus."
With the All-Play brand, we'd say EA is moving in the right direction for capturing that segment. What else they have up their sleeve, we'll just have to wait and see.
