Former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said during his talk at the Gaming Insiders Summit that game brands need to be consistent like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and FIFA but brands also need to innovate and it can be done without the need for adding Star Wars branding and stuffed toys like Rovio did with Angry Birds.
“I don’t think branding has anything to do with making stuffed toys,” he said via Polygon. “They are great ways to extend brands but they can also diminish a brand. They can counter relentless innovation and polish.
“Adding a Star Wars brand is not an innovation. It plays pretty much as it [Angry Birds Space] did. Maybe tomorrow they will do something so fundamentally innovative that they will prove me wrong, but they haven’t really mastered the microtransaction model. I wish they had put as much innovation and energy into the code as went into all the other stuff. Maybe they wanted to be Disney before they had done enough.”