During a recent conference call with investors, EA indicated that it is planning on shifting attention away from partner-driven development and distribution and focus more on internal development of games. It was also stated that profit margins for internally developed PC-games can be as high as 90%, with console-based games generally producing a profit margin of 60 to 70%.
The company still intends to publish Crysis 2, currently in development at Crytek Frankfurt, as well as a currently unnamed project being developed in cooperation with Epic Games. EA also stated that it would be expanding further into digital distribution, though it will continue to support ‘physical’ copies of video games for a long period of time.
Surprisingly, EA made no mention of the Rock Band-franchise, for which EA has partnered up with Viacom-owned developer Harmonix. Furthermore, no instalment in the series was listed for a release in a forecast up to 2011. When asked for clarification in this matter, EA COO John Schappert stated that the company has “not included a lot of revenue for distribution next year, but we continued to have talks with [Harmonix] and hope that maybe there’s an opportunity to continue the relationship […].”
The Rock Band music store, an important source of revenue for music-based games, is currently controlled by Harmonix, with EA only involved in publishing the game and peripheral instruments.