EA had a regularly scheduled investor call today.. Stephen Reid posted shortly after to try and address the misinterpretations of what was said on the call that were running rampant on the forums. Here’s his post:
Let’s try and get one thing very clear:
Investor calls and conferences are for investors. They are not meant for the general public.
While I understand the desire to get any piece of information possible about The Old Republic from whatever source you can, that does not mean that every time an investor call (or conference) happens, you should expect to glean meaningful information from that. The primary audience for these statements is people who are invested in, or are planning to invest in, EA as a company. While some of you may indeed be investors, if you are, you’d probably know not to panic when you hear said statements.
Let’s break down a couple of those statements from Eric Brown, from the latest conference:
“In terms of timing, again, we haven’t given a street date yet. We won’t do so for some time, possibly at our next upcoming earnings call towards the end of October.”
Indeed, we have not given a street date (AKA launch date) for The Old Republic. While some of you have suggested that we ‘promised’ a launch date announcement before that time, in fact what Eric Brown said was that a date could be announced in September or October.
It’s important to also note the word ‘possibly’ was used in Eric’s statement above. Just as he didn’t promise that you would get a release date announcement in September, he isn’t promising a release date before the next earnings call. It could happen, but it’s not a promise.
Let’s look at this second statement:
“…we did hold out a slight possibility that it could slip to our March quarter. And the factors that would cause a slip is, for example, us not being completely satisfied with the scalability testing, and wanting to tune it for several extra weeks.â€
There is absolutely no change to our previous messaging with this statement. We are in active and extensive testing for The Old Republic. We’re aiming to release the game in the holiday 2011 window (or, before the end of the year, to speak in non-American for a minute).
However, as with any large and complex game project, there’s always the possibility of slippage. Always. That is why we have always said we’re aiming for that window, because it’s possible that unforeseen issues may push the date. Eric Brown is doing what he’s paid to do – letting investors know that the possibility exists. A possibility doesn’t mean a certainty.
Despite what doom-sayers may try and tell you, we are still very much aiming to ship in the holiday 2011 window (AKA, before the end of the year). We’re pushing out a major new build, we’re getting in our external testers to look at it soon, and then we’ll re-start our Game Testing Weekends.
Are there risks? Yeah, that goes with game development. Do we think we’re getting much, much closer? Yes we do. And when we feel confident about an exact date, you’ll get one. Rest assured.
Until then, try not to assume the sky is falling every time an investor asks a question and our CFO does his job, which is to let them know about every possibility.