Electronic Arts 2008 Annual Report Download - page 7

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Finally, we welcomed a new Chief Financial Officer, Eric Brown. Eric will lead our efforts in Finance and IT
globally and will be a driver of initiatives to improve efficiency and deliver better margins.
While it’s too soon to declare victory, there are early signs that the new structure is working. There are more
new games in development at EA than at any other time in our history. Quality scores are trending up. And a
recent employee survey confirmed that EA is now a better place to work.
Looking Ahead — FY09
EA is projecting FY09 to be another year of big growth on both the top and bottom line. This growth will be
enabled by the new team and organization approach and by the strongest and largest slate of titles ever
delivered in EA’s history. In total, we are forecasting to ship over 150 SKUs in FY09 — up more than 35 from
last year.
This year’s game portfolio includes innovative sequels and extensions to some of our most popular franchises,
including:
•MySims Kingdom from the Sims team. This title follows last year’s successful launch of the MySims
franchise which was exclusive to the Nintendo platforms.
•NBA Live — this basketball title staged a big comeback last year. Breakthrough innovations being
developed this year promise another great experience.
•Battlefield: Bad Company — One of our most popular PC franchises is moving to the Xbox 360 and
PLAYSTATION 3. Early reviews from critics have been very strong.
We are also developing the largest slate of brand new properties in EA’s history. Among the 15 new titles we
expect to launch are:
•Mirror’s Edge — from our DICE Studio in Sweden — this game is hailed by critics for its fresh look
and innovative game play.
•Dead Space — a sci-fi horror game from our Redwood Shores Studio that is complemented with a
serial online graphic novel.
•SimAnimals — a new property with animal protagonists for the Nintendo platforms.
•FaceBreaker — this new, humorous, arcade-style boxing game will be the first title to launch under the
recently-announced EA SPORTS Freestyle sub-brand and is the first new wholly-owned game from EA
SPORTS since 2002.
•SPORE — a highly anticipated title from the Maxis team. When SPORE debuts in September, it will
be supported with a rich menu of digital downloads and community-related features.
In addition — we have increased our slate for the Nintendo platforms. This year we plan to ship roughly 40
games for the Wii and Nintendo DS systems — up from 26 last year. We have specifically tailored versions of
our core franchises — such as our whole new line up from EA SPORTS under the All Play sub-brand. In
addition, we have Nintendo exclusive titles — including Boom Blox, SimAnimals and Skate It.
In FY09, we will deliver on the promise of two important deals we made in FY08 — Hasbro and VGH.
The Hasbro agreement offers a good example of how EA can vault into leadership in a new genre with a
smart partnership. This year with Hasbro, we will launch a series of titles including NERF N-STRIKE, Hasbro
Family Game Night and LITTLEST PET SHOP on multiple platforms. In FY09, we will also introduce Hasbro
properties on social networks like Facebook.
The VGH acquisition brought us BioWare and Pandemic Studios — two of the most talented developers in our
industry. BioWare recently released Mass Effect for the PC and is now developing a new role-playing game,
Dragon Age. The Pandemic team in Los Angeles is set to release Mercenaries 2 late this summer and a new
game, Saboteur.
Stockholder Letter