I know this is probably a knock on the game in your mind, but they've done a very good job on the series, in general.

I'm assuming you have no money in stocks or accounting/finance background. Until the earnings report this Q (when they finally became profitable) EA's Net Profit was negative wand their P/E was Negative (it's still rather high even for a tech stock- above 60 in fact). Bottom Line was negative. Just check the ticker - EA (previously ERTS). An increase in revenue doesn't necessarily increase profits. for many of these companies, it hasn't.

An increase in cashflow (measured using DCF), is another way of assessing value, esp with tech companies. It doesn't assess profits (profits and cash are two different things) and there are many problems using this.

Neobr10 - videogames are a notoriously low margin industry to begin with. Outside of Japan (where the companies are conglomerates that are involved in pachinko, spas, and other diversified activiuties) very few are profitable.

Until you guys are able to read a financial statement on Edgar or understand business, feel free to mind your own on the subject. I've actually made money investing in the stock of public companies in this industry. And bear in mind, too, stock prices are sometimes another matter entirely from value (though they're obviously related).

And yes, this may surprise you, but many businesses aren't profitable, even large ones. Some go out of business, some get acquired, some go through a downturn, some become profitable.

Because those FPS-es that are making money tend to make a shit ton of them. See: BF, TF2, COD. Everyone wants to publish the next COD.

Also, regarding Haze, Eurogamer had a very interesting article on Free Radical Design and why things went the way they went with Haze (among others).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-04-free-radical-vs-the-monsters

Some quotes:

The problems meant delays were inevitable, and Free Radical approached Ubisoft. "When you're talking to any publisher about delays the first reaction is denial," says Steve Ellis. "You spend a lot of time talking and effectively making the situation worse. The next stage is reluctant acceptance, coupled with compromises as a result of us missing our date. We were made to do things because we had lost our ability to say no. That's where things went wrong."

Free Radical had to work to moving dates, as the game was delayed in small increments rather than the big one it needed. "It's like you're in a race and you're racing along, and there's a mechanic hanging on to the front trying to finish the car," says Doak. "And every lap you've got to smile, wave to the grandstand and pretend you're doing really well, even though on the other side you can see two wheels have just come off."

If things weren't bad enough, Haze soon had another problem. Ubisoft had agreed a deal with Sony whereby the game would become a PS3 exclusive in return for significant marketing support. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for Derek Littlewood," says Haze's project manager Martin Wakeley. "Because it became exclusive late in the project. And to be quite candid, it had never really ran on the PS3."

"There just isn't the interest there in doing anything that tries to step away from the rules of the genre - no one wants to do something that's quirky and different, because it's too much of a risk. And a large part of that is the cost of doing it."

That's very stupid. If you know that doing the same thing will most likely cause you to be in the red, it's definitely time for a change.

Given that devs/publishers aren't morons, I have a hard time believing that they would willingly do a game by the numbers of they'd forecast that it will lose money.

Either way, I won't cry a tear if all those whales go under and open up the way for smaller operations that are less risk adverse.

I was never one to scream for a more realistic than reality engine for shooters anyways.

Who wants to experience something that gets uncomfortably close to the experience of shooting real live people except psychos?

And yet they've made AR every month for over a decade...

I suspect you and I have very different versions of profitable, though obviously there would be a lot of companies that would score "profitable" according to both of us.