Electronic Arts tips its hand on big (and mysterious) titles in coming year

Electronic Arts is launching a number of big titles in the coming fiscal year that should get gamers excited, according to the company’s conference call with analysts today.

EA typically announces titles during its quarterly calls to get gamers frothing and to give analysts guidance about its expected financial performance. Those titles could always be delayed, but EA has been shipping more games on time than it used to.

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During today’s conference call, EA chief operating officer John Schappert ticked off a number of titles that should set tongues wagging, including some mysterious titles in the fourth fiscal quarter that ends March 31, 2011.

One of them is a first-person shooter game coming from Epic Games, the maker of the Gears of War and Unreal shooting games. There will also be new titles in that quarter based on EA’s existing franchises: DeadSpace, EA sports fighting, the Sims, Spore, Hasbro, Need for Speed simulation, and Dragon Age: Origins.

In the fall quarter (third fiscal) that ends on Dec. 31, 2010, EA plans to ship Crysis 2, a sequel to a hot-selling shooting game; a Need for Speed action driving game; a Harpy Potter game, presumably based on the upcoming movies (there are two of them) based on the final book in the series; and the Sims 3 for the consoles.

EA also expects that its digital titles will create a splash. In the coming year, online-based games are expected to generate $75o million in the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2011. That’s up more than 30 percent compared to the current fiscal year. At the same time, EA chief executive John Riccitiello said he did not see any evidence that digital online games are causing core gamers to spend less time with PC and console games.

Big digital online games coming in fiscal 2011 include Tiger Woods Online (which has launched in beta form), Fifa Online, and Need for Speed World. The latter is an online version of EA’s popular racing game.

EA believes that packaged goods games — those sold in retail stores — will shrink across the industry by 3 percent in the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2011. (That could change if there are hardware price cuts and the new motion controllers from Microsoft and Sony spur overall software sales). But with the growth in digital games, EA believes the overall game business will grow 8 percent during the same period.

In the second fiscal quarter that ends Sept. 30, 2010, EA expects to ship its new Medal of Honor game, which will take on Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 franchise. Schappert said he saw the Medal of Honor demo last week and (predictably) believes it is looking great. In that second fiscal quarter, EA also will ship All Points Bulletin, a massively multiplayer online game that is akin to a free-for-all version of Grand Theft Auto. All Points Bulletin is being developed by venture-funded Realtime Worlds.

In the first fiscal quarter, EA is shipping Skate 3, the skateboarding game that has taken the top title in the category away from Activision Blizzard’s Tony Hawk franchise.

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EA will be supporting both the new Microsoft Project Natal motion-control system and the Sony PlayStation wand-like device (reportedly called Arc). Schappert said EA will have games available at launch for those systems. EA isn’t talking about games for those devices yet, but my guess is that a sequel to EA Sports Active, which ships in the fall of 2010, will use motion controls. Previously, EA Sports Active shipped only on the Nintendo Wii, which pioneered motion controls on a console.

Schappert said it is possible that hardware prices may be cut during the year as platform owners try to reduce manufacturing costs and pass on the savings to users and as platform owners try to stoke demand for games. EA’s BioWare division is also working on an MMO based on Star Wars, dubbed the Old Republic. There is no launch date scheduled for that game yet, but EA is assuming it will not ship in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011.

As to current titles, EA starts selling Dante’s Inferno, an original title where you play a knight who goes into Hell to retrieve his beloved Beatrice, tomorrow. EA saw 3 million downloads of a demo, partly due to a strong response yesterday to its Super Bowl commerical advertising Dante’s Inferno.