What the product manager (PM) is responsible for, whether his responsibilities depend on the company, what professional qualities are important to him — we talked about this and much more during WN Winter’21 with Chong Ahn, Head of Product Management at Electronic Arts.

The gaming market continues to consolidate. Electronic Arts becomes the owner of Glu Mobile. The business was valued at $2.1 billion. However, the company accounts for $364 million. So the whole deal will cost electronics $2.4 billion.

Despite the loss of exclusive rights to release Star Wars games, EA does not intend to abandon the profitable direction. In a conversation with investors, the company stated that its total earnings on franchise titles exceeded $ 3 billion.This was told by the CEO of Electronic Arts Andrew Wilson (Andrew Wilson).

Electronic Arts has submitted a report for the third quarter of fiscal year 2021 (ended December 31). The company talked about the success of its key titles and increased revenue to $1.6 billion. However, its net profit fell by 39%.Key data

Giveaways in the Epic Games Store are in great demand among players. This time, over 19 million people downloaded free copies of Star Wars Battlefront II during the week of the promotion in the store.

Yesterday Ubisoft announced a new open-world game in the Star Wars universe. Immediately after that, the company’s shares rose in price. However, the project is likely to be released only after Disney‘s exclusive contract with Electronic Arts ends.The Swedish studio Massive Entertainment, known for the franchise The Division, is developing a new game.

The deal between Take-Two and Codemasters will not take place. Suddenly, EA announced its desire to buy a British studio, which offered Dirt developers $ 200 million more.

Electronic Arts has released a report on the company’s internal processes. Among other things, EA talked about the publisher’s annual revenue, employee benefits, recruitment, and her understanding of the gaming audience.

Electronic Arts has been accused of using dynamic complexity technology in its three major sports franchises since 2017. The class action lawsuit against the company states that in this way users are forced to buy loot boxes.The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Northern California, the newspaper reports Gamesindustry.biz .

Not all gaming companies can boast of great success. Electronic Arts summed up the results of the second fiscal quarter of 2021 (ended September 30). The publisher’s profit for this period decreased by 78% at once compared to last year.

Electronic Arts is once again accused of using loot boxes. This time the case is taking place in Canada, where two citizens saw a violation of the local criminal code in the actions of the company.

EA has once again faced criticism of its microtransaction policy. An advertisement for FIFA 21 loot boxes appeared in the magazine of a children’s toy store, which directly talked about the need to open packs with football players.Attention to the problem was drawn by one of the Twitter users who published a photo of a page from the magazine of the British chain of toy stores Smyths Toys.

Electronic Arts will continue to rebrand and this time will take up updating the Origin store. The new desktop application will be called EA Desktop and will become a “new generation PC gaming platform”.

Along with details about the Xbox Series X, Microsoft has announced a collaboration with Electronic Arts. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have access to games from the EA Play library at no additional cost.

Electronic Arts shareholders refused bonuses to the company’s top management and gave a serious reason for reflection. Up to this point, only 2.2% of companies in the Russell 3000 index did not receive bonuses due to investor decisions.

By 2020, digital copies have become more in demand in console retail. Major publishers now sell more digital than disc versions.

Publisher Electronic Arts summed up the financial results for April-June. The period turned out to be very successful for the company. One of the main drivers of growth was the PC games market.

Top managers of Electronic Arts did not deserve such high salaries. Representatives of CtW Investment Group, an organization that had previously made the same claims to Activision management, are sure of this.

China’s NetEase earns more from games than Activision Blizzard and EA. Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad drew attention to this.