Monday, April 28, 2008                                                                           8:55 PM

If EA Launched A Console

(Ah... Microsoft Paint: The most ghetto editing program God ever wrote)

For the second generation in a row, the video game "console war" is being fought by the same three competitors: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft are sort of in a different league than Nintendo, as they're going for the gamers that are into high-end, high-definition, pricier hardware that gives you a 3 red lights when it's time to stop playing. Nintendo, meanwhile, is going for the casuals with their cheaper systems and generally more risky, innovative, un-internet-savvy approach. With Microsoft's Xbox 360 looking to reach the 3rd anniversary of its presence on the market this November, and the PS3 and Wii only a year younger, design docs are undoubtedly already being drawn up in secret labs that reek with the smell of high-payed nerds in preparation for the NEXT generation of gaming hardware.

On the other side of all the hardware foolishness is, of course, the 3rd party software developers. Traditionally, smaller companies have been happy to simply sell their wares on others' consoles and just focus on themselves. However, things have begun changing rapidly in the industry. Large 3rd party companies are eating up the smaller ones like Ralph Nader eats weedcake, and GIGANTIC corporations (Activision-Blizzard and Electronic Arts being the biggest) are eating those large ones, in turn. This brings me to my theory. Electronic Arts, or EA, as they're known to the acronym-using crowd, is massively important to the gaming industry. With IPs like Madden, Need for Speed, and the Battlefield series , it has a pretty big chokehold on the wallets of all the "dudes" of the world. By "dudes" I mean the people that watch NASCAR while wearing beer-hats on their behinds and playing fantasy football all at the same time. Those dudes are loyal to Madden and friends. They're pretty much guaranteed to buy a console to get the updated versions of such games.

And it's not just "dudes" that are loyal EA fans. EA has games like Mass Effect, Comand & Conquer, Rock Band, and the Sims in its library that pretty much print money. Did I mention that they own THE SIMS? Every single EA employee laughs their way to the bank every month because of that ONE franchise alone. But the rest is hardly icing on the cake. It's more like pie and jello and brownie mix and walrus blubber all over the freaking cake. EA is stuffed with cash-cow franchises.

(Pictured to the left: a typical Madden/NASCAR fan with his loving family. The flower on his sleeveless tux goes well with the multiple gaps in his bride's teeth, imo. The hole in the crotch of his raggedy jeans is PROBABLY from the dog, which is excusable. And his bride-to-be couldn't drop the cig even for a wedding photo. Classy.)

In fact, here is a list of just a few of EA's franchises:

(Sadly, one of the three game boxes pictured is REAL. I'll let you guess which one...)

Army of Two
Battlefield
Black & White
Boom Blox
Burnout
Command & Conquer
Crysis
FIFA
FIFA Street
The Godfather
Harry Potter
James Bond 007
Left 4 Dead
Madden
Marble Madness
Mass Effect
Medal of Honor
Mercenaries
NASCAR
NBA Live
NBA Street
NCAA Football
NCAA March Madness
Need for Speed
NFL Head Coach
NHL Franchise
ROCK BAND
Shaq-Fu
Sid Meier's Franchises
The Simpsons
The Sims
The Sims
The Sims
SimCity
Skate
SPORE
SSX
Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Ultima
Wing Commander

Oh and here's a list of some of Take-Two's (a company EA is likely to buy out soon) major franchises:

All Pro Football
The Bigs
Bioshock
Bully
Civilization
College Hoops
The Darkness
The Elder Scrolls
Grand Theft Auto
Manhunt
Midnight Club
MLB
Serious Sam
Sid Meier's Pirates
Top Spin

If EA launched their own console, all of those franchises would be exclusive to that platform. ALL OF THEM. That's literally every decent sports franchise that doesn't have "Mario" in the name, along with an unbelievable number of triple-A games that would be exclusive. Grand Theft Auto 5 only on the EA box sound like a bad idea? Tough berries, that's how it would be. Imagine "Joe Gamer" going into a store and seeing the Xbox 720, the PS4, and the EArhombus sitting on the shelves. He, like a lot of people, likes Madden, Grand Theft Auto, Bioshock, Rock Band, Tiger Woods, Mass Effect, Burnout, Rock Band, Mercenaries, and the Sims. Want those games, Joe? There's only one place you'll get it, and it's not with Microsoft or Sony. "But Microsoft has Halo 4! Sony has... uh... Ratchet: Sexually Suggestive Subtitle!" Too bad. Nobody with a yen's worth of sense in their head is gonna drop their hard-earned Benjamins on the Xbox or the Playstation when handed that choice, especially not Joe.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention Nintendo in the above paragraph. That's because the majority of Wii owners don't seem to give a diarrhetic crap about EA's games. All they want is whatever Nintendo itself regurgitates. Given this, what I'm suggesting to the gaming community is that IF EA launches a console next generation, only it and Nintendo will survive as console manufacturers (and even Nintendo will fall unless they stay on their current path of alternative-target-demographic gaming machines). You can argue it blindly all day long, but do the math and I think you'll come to agree with me.

-Ryan Rigney



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