Electronic Arts Says Sony Is Back On Track

Electronic Arts' chief executive, John Riccitiello, has said that he believes Sony is back in the games hardware race with the PlayStation 3 and its recent price - and spec - drop.

"It looked like it might have been a two-horse race, but it's clearly a three-horse race", said Riccitiello, indicating that the PS3 had not previously been a contender in the mind of the world's biggest game maker.

"I think from this point, pleasantly for me, it's sort of Fat City in the game industry", Fat city, we presume, is a place of wealth and affluence and not a reference to Leonard Gardner's classic boxing novel.

The move into this console generation has been a tough one, according to Riccitiello, "It's been the longest, hardest transition in the history of the industry", he said - possibly overstating the case given the deaths along the route from 8-bit to the current period: Atari, Sinclair, SEGA all leap to mind.

However, he sees Black Friday - when sales of the PS3 in the USA rose by more than 200% - as a turning point in a hardware battle rejoined as a three-way.

"Last Friday marked one of those points where you can say something's changed. Around the world, based on the data I've got, it was pretty clear that the transition is now over."

You'd be forgiven for saying that EA has flip-flopped on its platform support. The publisher said that it had neglected the Wii early in the hardware cycle, now its chief executive is sounding surprised about the PS3's success. Furthermore, he pointed out that the Wii has proved a difficult platform for EA.

This also comes in the same period as - just before Vivendi Games and Activision's merger into Activision Blizzard - Riccitiello pointed out that, "Is it (the industry) ripe (for mergers), or has it already been picked? I would argue that it's been largely picked..."

"The Wii is a challenge for all of us ... partly because of the strength of Nintendo and partly because it's a more casual game experience that most game companies aren't as comfortable building for as they are for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3", he said. EA has around a 14% share of the software market on the Wii, compared to 20% on the PS3 and 360.

While this isn't great news for EA, it could be worse news for Nintendo. If the world's biggest (for now) third-party publisher is struggling with the Wii, that can't bode too well for third-party support across the board.

Riccitiello also mentioned what a success Rock Band has been in the States, "Hundreds of thousands (of copies) sold through over the Thanksgiving weekend. Literally every box we made", he said.

A little bit of a shame then that the PS3 version resulted in unhappy punters unable to thrash riffs on their axes - reported right here.

Still EA's got to be happy with Need for Speed: ProStreet hitting high in this week's UK charts, eh readers?

^{Source: Reuters}