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Electronic Arts is unhappy it did not produce enough highly-rated new games in 2007, despite having managed to line its pockets with record amounts of money.

"While we are the third-party quality leader, we are not satisfied with where we are; we did not have any internally developed breakaway titles, and no one of EA's internally developed titles hit a Metacritic rating of 90 or greater," said boss John Riccitello in an earnings conference call.

However, he believes 2008 (or fiscal year 2009, which ends next April) will be a different story, with a fresh RPG from BioWare and new LOTR game among the stand out titles.

"The FY 09 or, if you will, the calendar 08 title plan feels very good to me. Titles out of our partners at BioWare like Dragon Age feel very strong," said Riccitello.

"People are very keen on a title we're developing through our DiCE group in Sweden called Mirror's Edge. Anything with Sims written on it feels always feels good, and we're coming up with a very innovative new title called Sim Animals - that's very strong," he added.

He went on to tell analysts that a fresh take on Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings was on the way, although it was not clear whether this was existing game White Council or a new one altogether.

We also heard that Rock Band will now not ship in Europe until Q1 2009 (which begins in April), and EA confirmed delays for Battlefield: Bad Company and Mercenaries 2.

Fresh boxing title FaceBreaker was another picked out as having lots of "breakaway" potential.

Star performers for EA to date are FIFA 08, Need For Speed ProStreet, The Simpsons, Madden 08 and NBA Live. Riccitello believed the publisher was sitting on top of another big seller with Burnout Paradise, too.

Källa: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=91935 Eurogamer

Sim animlas? wtf? :)