Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has made headlines at quite a few intervals this year, his latest foray into the news surrounding an estimation of how much of an impact digital games are making on overall industry sales. In a recent interview with Reuters, Riccitiello also discussed the recent boost gaming has received thanks to the recent price cuts.
“We actually have seen a pretty substantial pick up in hardware sales, particularly for the PS3,” said Riccitiello. “The pick up is pretty much what we expected. The other thing I would point out though is that the lowest price hardware is $199 and in the history of our industry, most hardware typically sells for $149 or below. That’s still in front of us, so that makes us feel better about the longer term, as hardware manufacturers get to that price point when we’ll see, yet again, another big pick up in sales.”
On the digital games front, “it’s almost half the industry now; about 40 to 45 percent. Next year, it’s likely to be the largest share of the total industry, it’ll be bigger than the console games all put together.” Riccitiello continued, “A couple years ago, EA embarked on a plan to really build itself up in this new frontier and in the last quarter alone, we did $138 million in revenue and if EA’s digital business were a stand alone company, it would be the darling of Wall Street,” he continued. “It’s in a larger company right now, but we’re building it very quickly and our goal in Electronic Arts is to have a very profitable packaged goods business, but to also have a digital goods business of a similar scale over time.”
Do you agree with John Riccitiello? Or is the impact of digital gaming overestimated by many major development and publishing heads? Give us your own analysis in the comments section below!