You Won't Have John Riccitiello to Kick Around Anymore

Catch you later, John Ricearoni- err, John Tortellini.

As much as people love to hate EA now I would honestly take the output over the last few years under Riccitello compared with the previous few years under Larry Probst.

I mean make no mistake, there were a lot of shitty decisions by Electronic Arts under his tenure but the fact of the matter is unlike the previous administration it seemed like they were trying. They put out risky games and they failed. Then they tried to copy what was popular and failed a bit at that too. They made a lot of people angry along the way, but if we remember the EA of 2005 it was pretty grim.

Can't help but feel that this'll only make things worse for the way EA operates in future. Throughout the first half of his tenure Riccitiello pushed for new and interesting titles, only to find the guys insisting that was what they wanted oddly didn't bother to show up when the actual games got released.

He's going to run Simcity . . . once he gets a persistent internet connection and a large enough plot.

Why is signing off with /s/? All I could think off was 4chan /s/

That is a good resignation letter.

Anyway, looking forward to no meaningful change whatsoever.

People love to hate on Johnny R., but do you remember how fucking abysmal EA was before he came on board? Cause I sure as hell do.

He gave us Dead Space, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and BF Bad Company 2. I, for one, will miss you John.

Matt Rorie for EA CEO.

Thanks for giving us Skate, Mirror's Edge, Burnout Paradise and Dead Space. Sucks that having interesting games didn't work out for EA in the long run.

Jonny boy was not the problem.

I can respect taking responsibility for your decisions. Too many people are always quick to lay blame wherever else they can.

The Riccitiello death clock finaly rung

edit

Mass Effect wasn't made by EA, it wasn't even funded by them.

Doesn't really matter who's CEO of EA. They can do no right, apparently.

As far as CEOs go, Riccitiello always struck me as a pretty earnest guy. Still, it's well past time for him to move on...

Enter, the future—Jeff Green's last name is a synonym for money, AND he's Jewish! They'd be losing money not to choose him as successor. He's the right candidate for the right time.

But 2+3 were. When I say ME or DA, I mean the whole franchise.

And also Dragon Age was well into development by the time the Bioware deal came about, so probably not a ton going into that either.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. Part of me is happy that EA (or it's shareholders rather) is taking steps to repair it's image. Part of me is also terrified of what direction EA might take next.

I am surprised his resignation letter didn't have a micro-transaction in it.

Damn didn't expect to see this today. But considering what EA has been through in the past few years it's not a huge surprise. But between Geoff Green and Peter Moore...I think Moore would win in a wrestling cage match.

I love it how he used the term "FY14" he is so EA he makes everything sound like their sports franchises

And then they were kind of responsible for knocking the wind out of DA2 with the dev cycle given.

I mean I still really liked it, but it was not the product it should have been.

The real tragedy is that it took two pages for someone to make this joke. Well done, sir!

https://twitter.com/Greenspeak/status/313746393447677952

Hey! I'm looking for a new job!

I'm not gonna shed a tear, the whole executive branch of EA and shove it as far as I'm concerned.

its one thing to poison the well on niche games , but when your turning off a wide customer base to your company , its time to go before it gets any worse . had to stop the bleeding .

@paulunga said:

I know, people were excited about the new direction he was trying to take EA in at the time... until the economy went into the shitter, the gambles on new IPs weren't paying off, and they sank way too much money into The Old Republic. Then, the chosen one fell to the influence of the dark side. It was a sad sequence of events with some unfortunate timing.

@retrovirus said:

Yes. He's just the guy to revitalize the image of EA into the digital future!

@snail said:

@mattyftm said:

JEFF GREEN FOR CEO!!!!!

This I can get behind. Screw the Peter Moore supporters.

I would be totally on board with this, but after what he was saying about teenage girls on the Tested Dadcast I don't think anyone would make him president of anything. (I still throw all my support at him nonetheless)

Someone get Jeff motherfucking Green on the phone!

Real Racing 3 is nothing to be proud of.

BOOM!

I think a Star Wars MMO has such huge expectations that they could never meet them fully. They should have done something a little smaller and then expand on it through expansions. Unfortunately, they went for the full monty and did not necessarily achieve it. The game was still fun though for about a month.

He's already waiting

Anyone else notice how Riccitello has slowly been turning into Palpatine over the last few years?

Side note: I just told my wife the news (she used to love Maxis games) and her reaction was this: "They fucked up one game too many! Time to go Johnny Boy."

at least he will now have plenty of time to play Sim City.

None of this really matters because the board is so hell bent on microtransactions and cash shop type features and always online functionality in their games which garners ZERO SUPPORT from consumers. There are no gamers who want this. Their brand is suffering because they are trying to tell us what we want. If they can prove they want to change in the next year or so, fine. Until then, they will still see me not buying their games.

Don't worry, more forced-online games, crammed-in multi-player, season passes, excessive DLC, in-game micro-transactions, annualization of every game, games with nothing changed each year but the number in their title, and shitty launch experiences is all we need to really boost our revenue and keep this ship on the right course!

Also, why did he sign his email with a "/s/" sarcasm tag?

It seems to be doing really well on its F2P model at least. An initial disappointment certainly but it's rebounding somewhat.

Pretty shitty headline. But that's right, I'm on the Internet so I must hate EA and Riccitello.

Damn, I'm curious to see who the next guy is and hope he'll do awesome stuff with the company.

That's a pretty damning thing to say about an MMO. Things were pretty different six years ago, only a truly crazy person would try anything like that now. I hope the Elder Scrolls MMO hasn't cost only a fraction of that.

I would say it's a pretty standard resignation letter, though it certainly beats the time when my CEO resigned via a smarmy trite haiku on twitter to all the world (and the ~40k employees), before bolting with his golden parachute after doing a reverse stock-split that backfired and lost 80% of the valuation in only one year (on a stock that had already lost 80% of its valuation before the reverse split!).

@pixeldemon said:

here's hoping

Anyone else notice that he didn't mention SimCity or Dead Space in the games he's proud of? Two of their biggest releases this year so far.

It's all Sim City. Losing money is one thing, losing trust and confidence is everything.

@p_p_o_d: Haha, I tip my hat to you sir.

@branthog: I'm pretty sure the /s/ means signed so it'd be his actual signature.