Larry Probst on The Rise and Rise of Electronic Arts
World Exclusive: The biggest independent publisher in the business has even bigger plans for the future - and there's no time to rest on his laurels for EA's CEO Larry Probst, who spoke exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz about his company's ambition.
"People think of us as this 800 pound gorilla, but on a global basis our market share is only 20 per cent. We think, 'why can't that be 25 per cent or 30 per cent?'"
If there's one line that sums up Larry Probst's feeling about Electronic Arts, it's that one; and equally, if there's one reason why the rest of the industry's publishers should be even more concerned about their biggest competitor, it's that one.
EA doesn't see itself as being a giant; EA sees itself as a healthy, growing company with plenty of expansion yet to come. It will record well over $3 billion in revenue next year, making it significantly more than twice the size of its nearest competitor in the western marketplace (closer to three times, in fact), but as far as its chief executive is concerned, that's only the beginning.
Speaking exclusively with our sister site GamesIndustry.biz, Larry Probst is bullish about the prospects for EA over the coming years - he expects the company to manage the coming hardware transition with ease, while other publishers will fall by the wayside or be forced into mergers or acquisitions, and he talks confidently about the growth in EA's market share that he expects to see in the next three to five years.
Probst is also at home comparing EA to some of the biggest companies in the industry - and it's here that the real scale of EA's vision of the future becomes clear. He mentions Nike, which holds 70 per cent of its key markets - a statistic to send shivers down the spines of EA's competitors. He mentions Disney, whom he describes as having "the most valuable portfolio of intellectual property of any company I can think of," and says that EA would like to emulate that.
Then there are the new emerging platforms; the Sony PSP, which Probst believes will be a major success, the Nintendo DS, which EA has pledged support to and which he expects to appeal to an under-18 demographic, and even Xbox Live, which EA finally signed up to support last week. EA will be everywhere in the coming years; the Kingmaker isn't playing favourites, and it's happy to take revenues wherever they might exist. In other words - no platform is safe.
You can check out the full text of the interview, which covers these and many more topics, over on Gamesindustry.biz today.