Riccitiello: EA Will be the One Great Video Game Company

You've got to give it to Electronic Arts' CEO, John Riccitiello, he's not short on ambition. In an interview with The Financial Times this weekend, he indicated just where he thinks his company sits in the video games pantheon - and, frankly, it's less 'pantheon' and more 'monotheon', with EA being the single god.

Says Riccitiello, "I read a book on how every medium creates one great company: animation created Disney, CBS was created by radio, NBC by television.

"Interactive entertainment is going to determine one great company and I think it’s this one."

The fact that NBC is now owned by General Electric, and CBS is owned by Viacom should not be allowed to get in the way of a good business theory, of course.

How is the R-man going to achieve Disney-status for Electronic Arts? According to the interview, "Above all, I’m trying to bring great quality and innovation back . . . I’m also trying to drive us towards a variety of new business models, whether it be subscription or micro-transactions, or advertising-based".

In the light of recent events with Battlefield: Bad Company, he might like to leave the micro-transactions to one side until everybody simmers down.

He is, of course, bullish about his own position - dragging out the old "Video games as Hollywood" meme that some ancient SPOnG staffers recalls EA founder Trip Hawkins using in London in 1991 just before rolling out the mighty 3DO.

Riccitiello picks up the Hollywood theme and sprints with it, telling the FT, "It (the video game industry) feels like what movie moguls might have seen in the 1920s and said: ‘Hey, we’ve got talkies now, where is it going?’ I feel like we’ve stepped through a time window where our games are so compelling and seem so real.”

We've gone through a time window to 1927? SPOnG can't wait for colour.

Finally, what news of the Rockstar, sorry, Take-Two Interactive acquisition? According to the interview, "He envisages the fiercely independent Rockstar fitting into the semi-autonomous studio system he has established at EA over the past year. It is a system he describes as 'city state-style independence'. This studio structure stems from his experience with Elevation Partners, the private equity firm he moved to in Redwood Shores.

"I spent three years outside EA managing independent developers, while EA ran a global monolithic studio organisation. I thought central command and control homogenisation had run its course."

So, EA moving away from 'central command and control' - this is certainly a positive message for the Housers and crew over at Rockstar. It's certainly a message for them, and not an uncoded one either.

^{Source: The Financial Times}