The story
Founded by Trip Hawkins on May 28, 1982.1
History
1982–1991: Trip Hawkins era, founding, and early success
Trip Hawkins had been an Apple Inc. employee since 1978, at a time when the firm had only about fifty employees. Over the next four years, the market for home personal computers skyrocketed. By 1982, Apple had completed its initial public offering (IPO) and become a Fortune 500 company with over one thousand employees. In February 1982, Hawkins arranged a meeting with Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital to discuss financing his new venture, Amazin' Software. Valentine encouraged Hawkins to leave Apple, where the latter served as Director of Product Marketing, and allowed Hawkins to use Sequoia Capital's spare office space to start the company. Trip Hawkins incorporated and established the company with a personal investment of an estimated US$200,000 on May 27, 1982.
For more than seven months, Hawkins refined his Electronic Arts business plan. With aid from his first employee (with whom he worked in marketing at Apple), Rich Melmon, the original plan was written, mostly by Hawkins, on an Apple II in Sequoia Capital's office in August 1982. During that time, Hawkins also employed two of his former staff from Apple, Dave Evans and Pat Marriott, as producers, and a Stanford MBA classmate, Jeff Burton from Atari for international business development. The business plan was again refined in September and reissued on October 8, 1982. By November, the employee headcount rose to 11, including Tim Mott, Bing Gordon, David Maynard, and Steve Hayes. Having outgrown the office space provided by Sequoia Capital, the company relocated to a San Mateo office that overlooked the San Francisco Airport landing path.
When he incorporated the company, Hawkins originally chose Amazin' Software as their company name, but his other early employees of the company universally disliked the name; as a result, the company changed its name to Electronic Arts in November 1982. He scheduled an off-site meeting in the Pajaro Dunes, where the company once held such off-site meetings. Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers "software artists". Hence, the latest version of the business plan suggested the name "SoftArt". Hawkins and Melmon knew the founders of Software Arts, the creators of VisiCalc, and thought their permission should be obtained. Dan Bricklin did not want the name used because it sounded too similar (perhaps "confusingly similar") to Software Arts; however, the name concept was liked by all the attendees. Hawkins had also recently read a bestselling book about the film studio United Artists and liked the reputation that the company had created. Hawkins said everyone had a vote, but they would lose it if they went to sleep.
Hawkins liked the word "electronic", and various employees had considered the phrases "Electronic Artists" and "Electronic Arts". When Gordon and others pushed for "Electronic Artists", in tribute to the film company United Artists, Steve Hayes opposed, saying, "We're not the artists, they [the developers] are..." This statement from Hayes immediately tilted sentiment towards Electronic Arts and the name was unanimously endorsed and adopted later in 1982. He recruited his original employees from Apple, Atari, Xerox PARC, and VisiCorp, and got Steve Wozniak to agree to sit on the board of directors. Hawkins was determined to sell directly to buyers. Combined with the fact that Hawkins was pioneering new game brands, this made sales growth more challenging. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. Former CEO Larry Probst arrived as VP of Sales in late 1984 and helped expand the already successful company. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave EA higher margins and better market awareness, key advantages the company leveraged to leapfrog its early competitors.
Promoting its developers was a trademark of EA's early days. Games were sold in square packages modeled after album covers (such as those for 1983's M.U.L.E. and Pinball Construction Set). Hawkins thought the packaging would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling. EA routinely referred to their developers as "artists" and gave them photo credits in their games and full-page magazine ads. Their first such ad, accompanied by the slogan "We see farther," was the first video game advertisement to feature software designers. EA shared lavish profits with its developers, which added to its industry appeal.
In the mid-1980s, Electronic Arts aggressively marketed products for the Amiga, a home computer introduced in 1985. Commodore had given EA development tools and prototype machines before Amiga's actual launch. For Amiga EA published some notable non-game titles. A drawing program Deluxe Paint (1985) and its subsequent versions became perhaps the most famous piece of software available for Amiga platform. In addition, EA's Jerry Morrison conceived the idea of a file format that could store images, animations, sounds, and documents simultaneously, and would be compatible with third-party software. He wrote and released to the public the Interchange File Format, which soon became an Amiga standard. Other Amiga programs released by EA included Deluxe Music Construction Set, Instant Music and Deluxe Paint Animation. Some of them, most notably Deluxe Paint, were ported to other platforms. For Macintosh EA released a black & white animation tool called Studio/1, and a series of Paint titles called Studio/8 and Studio/32 (1990).
Relationships between Electronic Arts and its external developers often became difficult when the latter missed deadlines or diverged from the former's creative directions. In 1987, EA released Skate or Die!, its first internally developed game. EA continued publishing its external developers' games while experimenting with its internal development strategy. This led to EA's decision of purchasing out a series of companies it identifies as successful, as well as the decision to release annualized franchises to cut budget costs. Because of Trip Hawkins' obsession of simulating a sports game, he signed a contract with football coach John Madden that led to EA's developing and releasing annual Madden NFL games.
In 1988, EA published a flight simulator game exclusively for Amiga, F/A-18 Interceptor, with filled-polygon graphics that were advanced for the time. Another significant Amiga release (also initially available for Atari ST, later converted for other platforms) was Populous (1989) developed by Bullfrog Productions. It was a pioneering title in the genre that was later called "god games". In 1990, Electronic Arts began producing console games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, after previously licensing its computer games to other console-game publishers.
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On March 26, 1990, Electronic Arts filed for an IPO at the NASDAQ stock exchange and went public under the ticker symbol "ERTS", opening at a split-adjusted price of $0.52. The symbol was changed to "EA" on December 20, 2011.
1991–2007: Larry Probst era, continuous expansion, and success into the new millennium
In 1991, Trip Hawkins stepped down as EA's CEO and was succeeded by Larry Probst. Hawkins went on to found the now-defunct 3DO Company, but still remained EA's chair until July 1994. In October 1993, 3DO developed the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which at the time was the most powerful game console. Once a critic of game consoles, Hawkins had conceived a console that unlike its competitors would not require a first-party license to be marketed and was intended to appeal to the PC market. Electronic Arts was the 3DO Company's primary partner in sponsoring its console, showcasing on it its latest games. With a retail price of US$700 (equivalent to $1,560.12 in 2025) compared to its competitors' $100, the console lagged in sales, and with the 1995 arrival to North America of Sony's PlayStation, a cheaper and more powerful alternative, combined with a lower quality of the 3DO's software library as a backfiring of its liberal license policy, it fell further behind and lost competition. Electronic Arts dropped its support for 3DO in favor of the PlayStation, 3DO's production ceased in 1996 and, for the remainder of the company's lifetime, 3DO developed video games for other consoles and the IBM PC until it folded in 2003.
In 1994, Electronic Arts and THQ signed a licensing agreement to develop and release EA's titles, like John Madden Football, FIFA International Soccer, Shaq Fu, Jungle Strike and Urban Strike for various consoles. In 1995, Electronic Arts won the European Computer Trade Show award for best software publisher of the year. As the company was still expanding, it opted to purchase space in Redwood Shores, California in 1995 for construction of a new headquarters, which was completed in 1998. Early in 1997, Next Generation identified Electronic Arts as the only company to regularly profit from video games over the past five years, and noted it had "a critical track record second to none". In 2000, EA replaced its long-running Shapes logo with one based on the EA Sports logo used at the time. EA also started to use a brand-specific structure around this time, such as names like Westwood Studios, Maxis, Jane's Combat Simulations and Bullfrog Productions, as well as the short-lived label Gonzo Games with the main publishing side of the company (also known as Action and Entertainment) rebranding to EA Games in 2000. The EA Sports brand was retained for major sports titles, the new EA Sports Big label would be used for casual sports titles with an arcade twist, and the full Electronic Arts name would be used for co-published and distributed titles. EA began to move toward direct distribution of digital games and services with the acquisition of the popular online gaming site Pogo.com in 2001. In 2009, EA acquired the London-based social gaming startup Playfish.
In December 1997, Electronic Arts ended its Japanese publishing joint-venture with Victor Entertainment, entitled Electronic Arts Victor, and purchased out Victor's 35% stake in the venture. On May 1, 1998, Electronic Arts announced the formation of two joint-ventures with Square. The first; Electronic Arts Square K.K., would publish Electronic Arts' titles in Japan and also developed the PlayStation 2 launch title X-Squad. The second; Square Electronic Arts L.L.C., would publish Square's titles in North America. The venture was described as a success by Square, as it allowed the company to release more of its titles in the North American market. In February 2003, with the preparation of Square and Enix's merger into Square Enix; both partnerships were announced to be dissolved at the end of March with each partner buying the other's shares. Electronic Arts Square was renamed as Electronic Arts K.K. and began self-publishing EA's titles in Japan from then on while Square Electronic Arts was folded under Square Enix's North American operations.
In 2004, EA made a multimillion-dollar donation to fund the development of game production curriculum at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division. On February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent. On June 20, 2006, EA purchased Mythic Entertainment, who are finished making Warhammer Online. After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN. The ESPN deal gave EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11, 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) for exclusive rights to college football content.
Much of EA's success, both in terms of sales and with regards to its stock market valuation, is due to its strategy of platform-agnostic development and the creation of strong multi-year franchises. EA was the first publisher to release yearly updates of its sports franchises—Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods, etc.—with updated player rosters and small graphical and gameplay tweaks. Recognizing the risk of franchise fatigue among consumers, EA announced in 2006 that it would concentrate more of its effort on creating new original intellectual property. In September 2006, Nokia and EA announced a partnership in which EA becomes an exclusive major supplier of mobile games to Nokia mobile devices through the Nokia Content Discoverer. In the beginning, Nokia customers were able to download seven EA titles (Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 and FIFA Street 2) on the holiday season in 2006. Rick Simonson is the executive vice-president and director of Nokia and starting from 2006 is affiliated with John Riccitiello and are partners.
2007–2013: John Riccitiello era, casual gaming and Origin's launch
In February 2007, Probst stepped down from the CEO job while remaining on the board of directors. His handpicked successor is John Riccitiello, who had worked at EA for several years previously, departed for a while, and then returned. Riccitiello previously worked for Elevation Partners, Sara Lee and PepsiCo. In June 2007, new CEO John Riccitiello announced that EA would reorganize itself into four labels, each with responsibility for its own product development and publishing (the city-state model). The goal of the reorganization was to empower the labels to operate more autonomously, streamline decision-making, increase creativity and quality, and get games into the market faster. This reorganization came after years of consolidation and acquisition by EA of smaller studios, which some in the industry blamed for a decrease in quality of EA titles. In 2008, at the DICE Summit, Riccitiello called the earlier approach of "buy and assimilate" a mistake, often stripping smaller studios of its creative talent. Riccitiello said that the city-state model allows independent developers to remain autonomous to a large extent, and cited Maxis and BioWare as examples of studios thriving under the new structure.
During 2007, EA announced that it would be bringing some of its major titles to the Mac. EA also released Battlefield 2142, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Crysis, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Madden NFL 08, Need for Speed: Carbon, and Spore for the Mac. All of the new games have been developed for the Macintosh using Cider, a technology developed by TransGaming that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows games inside a translation layer running on Mac OS X. They are not playable on PowerPC-based Macs.
In February 2008, it was revealed that Electronic Arts had made a takeover bid for rival game company Take-Two Interactive. After its initial offer of US$25 per share, all cash stock transaction offer was rejected by the Take-Two board, EA revised it to US$26 per share, a 64% premium over the previous day's closing price and made the offer known to the public. Rumours had been floating around the Internet prior to the offer about Take-Two possibly being bought over by a bigger company, albeit with Viacom as the potential bidder. In May 2008, EA announced that it would purchase the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a South Korean mobile game developer and publisher. The company became EA Mobile Korea. In September 2008, EA dropped its buyout offer of Take-Two. No reason was given.
As of November 6, 2008, it was confirmed that Electronic Arts is closing its Casual Label & merging it with its Hasbro partnership with The Sims Label. EA also confirmed the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, who was given the position as former president of the EA Casual Division in May 2007. EA made this statement about the merger: "We've learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the retirement and departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games—development and marketing—into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics.... In the days and weeks ahead, we will make further announcements on the reporting structure for the other businesses in the Casual Label including EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives. Those businesses remain growth priorities for EA and deserve strong support in a group that will complement their objectives." This statement comes a week after EA announced it was laying off 6% about 600 of its staff positions and had a US$310 million net loss for the quarter.
Due to the 2008 economic crisis, Electronic Arts had a poorer than expected 2008 holiday season, moving it in February 2009 to cut approximately 1,100 jobs, which it said represented about 11% of its workforce. It also closed 12 of its facilities. Riccitiello, in a conference call with reporters, stated that its poor performance in the fourth quarter was not due entirely to the poor economy, but also to the fact that it did not release any blockbuster titles in the quarter. In the quarter ending December 31, 2008, the company lost US$641 million. On February 2, 2009, Ludlum Entertainment had signed a deal with Electronic Arts to grant exclusive rights to bring the work of Robert Ludlum into video gaming. As of early May 2009, the subsidiary studio EA Redwood Shores was known as Visceral Games. On June 24, 2009, EA announced it would merge two of its development studios, BioWare and Mythic into one single role-playing video game and MMO development powerhouse. The move placed Mythic under control of BioWare as Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk went in direct control of the new entity. By fall 2012, both Muzyka and Zeschuk had chosen to depart the merged entity in a joint retirement announcement.
On November 9, 2009, EA announced layoffs of 1,500 employees, representing 17% of its workforce, across a number of studios including EA Tiburon, Visceral Games, Mythic and EA Black Box. Also affected were "projects and support activities" that, according to Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown "don't make economic sense", resulting in the shutdown of popular communities such as Battlefield News and the EA Community Team. These layoffs also led to the complete shutdown of Pandemic Studios.
In October 2010, EA announced the acquisition of England-based iPhone and iPad games publisher Chillingo for US$20 million in cash. Chillingo published the popular Angry Birds for iOS and Cut the Rope for all platforms, but the deal did not include those properties, so Cut the Rope became published by ZeptoLab, and Angry Birds became published by Rovio Entertainment. On May 4, 2011, EA reported $3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011, and on January 13, 2012, EA announced that it had exceeded $1 billion in digital revenue during the previous calendar year. In a note to employees, EA CEO John Riccitiello called this "an incredibly important milestone" for the company.
EA Partners program (1997–present)
EA Partners' co-publishing program was dedicated to publishing and distributing games developed by third-party developers. EA Partners began as EA Distribution, formed in 1997 and led by Tom Frisina, a former executive from Accolade and Three-Sixty who helped both companies find third-party developers as to provide publishing support for them. Frisina's early partners included Looking Glass Studios, MGM Interactive for the rights to the James Bond property, DreamWorks Interactive, and eventually DICE; in the latter two cases, these studios were acquired by EA as part of the EA DICE family. In 2003, EA's president John Riccitiello pushed for a renaming of the EA Distribution label, seeing the potential to bring in more independent developers and additional revenue streams. While they rebranded the label as EA Partners in 2003, Riccitiello left EA the following year, which disrupted the direction the label had been aiming to go.
Oddworld Inhabitants, who had signed on with EA Partner for its next Oddworld games, found the situation difficult as EA Partners was reluctant to support games where it did not own the intellectual property rights and instead favored internal development. The situation with EA Partners switched gears in 2005 after EA and Valve signed an EA Partners deal for the physical distribution of The Orange Box; EA Partners realized it needed to be flexible to handle the different publishing opportunities presented to them. A similar breakthrough was reached with signing on Harmonix for the distribution of the Rock Band games, requiring them to work closely with MTV Games on the plastic instrument controllers necessary for the titles. A number of major partnerships were made over the next few years, including Namco Bandai, Crytek, Starbreeze Studios, id Software, Epic Games and People Can Fly, Double Fine Productions, Grasshopper Manufacture, Spicy Horse, and Realtime Worlds. While many of these partnerships proved successful, the division had two major marks on its name. It was associated with the situation around Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developed by 38 Studios, which had been significantly backed by loans from taxpayer funds from the state of Rhode Island. Kingdoms failed to be commercially successful, and EA Partners pulled out of making a sequel, leaving 38 Studios in default of its loan payback to the state. Secondly, while The Secret World from Funcom launched as a subscription game, Funcom had to switch their monetization model to free-to-play to improve their revenues, which further affected EA Partners.
Around April 2013, as part of a large 1000-employee layoff, many reporters claimed that EA Partners was also being shut down for its poor commercial performance, but the program remained active as the company refocused its efforts. Game Informer reported anonymous sources said the label would shut down. Respawn Entertainment's first game and Insomniac Games' Fuse were upcoming under EA Partners. The label remained dormant over the next several years, while Letts expanded on the EA Originals program, but following the move of EA Partners and EA Originals into the Strategic Growth group in August 2018, the label was revived on the March 2019 with a publishing deal with Velan Studios, which ended up releasing under Originals as Knockout City.
Notable publishing/distribution agreements include:
Alice: Madness Returns – Spicy Horse
APB – Realtime Worlds
Brütal Legend – Double Fine Productions
Bulletstorm – Epic Games
Crysis series – Crytek
DeathSpank – Hothead Games
Fuse – Insomniac Games
Hellgate: London – Flagship Studios
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – 38 Studios, Big Huge Games
Rock Band series – Harmonix and MTV Games
The Secret World – Funcom
The Orange Box – Valve Corporation
Shadows of the Damned – Grasshopper Manufacture
Shank and Shank 2 – Klei Entertainment
Syndicate – Starbreeze Studios
Warp – Trapdoor
EA Originals label (2017–present)
EA Originals is a label within Electronic Arts own EA Partners program to help support independently developed video games. EA funds the money for development, and once it recoups that, all additional revenue goes to the partner studio that created the game. That studio also gets to keep the intellectual property rights for whatever it creates, and even has creative control over the project. The program was announced at EA's press event at the 2016 E3 Conference, and builds upon the success it had with Unravel from Coldwood Interactive in 2015. The first game to be supported under this program was Fe by Zoink, released in 2018. It was followed by A Way Out from Hazelight Studios, Unravel Two from Coldwood Interactive and Sea of Solitude from Jo-Mei Games.
In 2019, during its EA Play event, EA teased three new titles. Among the games featured were Lost in Random from Zoink and an unnamed title from Hazelight Studios. It was also announced that Glowmade would be entering the initiative with a title called RustHeart. In June 2020, Hazelight Studios' untitled project was revealed as It Takes Two and was released the following year to critical acclaim.
In February 2023, Jeff Gamon, general manager of EA Partners, which oversees the Originals label, said the label would invest on bigger games, although for those cases the deal would not be as generous as the smaller games, as those are larger companies. Gamon said that the company still plans to release smaller and niche games, and do not want to completely abandon its roots. One such title, Wild Hearts was developed by Koei Tecmo's Omega Force; it was released in 2023 under the Originals label. Immortals of Aveum was released the same year.
In December 2023, EA announced Tales of Kenzera: Zau under the Originals label. In December 2024, EA announced Split Fiction under the Originals label as its third collaboration with Hazelight Studios.
From Wikipedia’s article on Electronic Arts, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.9