I know, I know, I have been neglecting the blog lately. Sorry about that. 🙂

I thought this article was well worth pointing out though. We tend to think of EA as one of the largest publishers in the games biz, and then conclude that perhaps it is slow to adapt. But in terms of how the games industry is changing, I actually think they are more on the ball than they are usually given credit for. The article is based on a speech he gave at the Stanford Hot Chips conference, apparently.

Check out these stats!

EA now typically spends two or three times as much on marketing and advertising as it does on developing a game. That’s because advertising is critical to getting a game in the top ten rankings. If you have a $10 million game, don’t be surprised if the the TV advertising costs drive the ad budget to $30 million. If a $60 game yields revenue of $35 for EA, then (according to my math) the company has to sell 1.1 million copies just to break even.

— EA’s chief creative officer describes game industry’s re-engineering | VentureBeat

Bear in mind, though, this is what they are moving away from. The rest of the article probably won’t be a huge surprise to regular readers on this blog, but it’s good to see big industry giants taking steps in these new directions. Hilleman specifically cites looking to Korea as a model, lifestyle-driven development goals, lower cost development, web models, “multihead” games (where many platforms connect to one game experience, albeit in different ways)…