EA pay

Electronic Arts have announced a profit warning for the fourth quarter, with sales falling significantly short of expectations. Forget all the guff about "difficult market conditions", the main reason is the quality of titles EA released in this time. Worst offender was Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, which sullied the name of the seminal N64 game. Other releases such as The Urbz and FIFA Street have been equally poor. Looking back further there was the rushed and buggy Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which lacked the polish and composure normally associated with EA games. Historically though, even the more underwhelming EA games have still sold, so it's good to see that some punters have had enough. Of course, this is all relative, with Need for Speed Underground 2 doing great business over Christmas and Burnout 3 winning a pile of BAFTA awards. EA are far and away the biggest publisher and will be so for a long time. But the recent lapse in quality control needs to be reversed, and quickly.