Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is the second-largest gaming company in the Americas and Europe by revenue and market capitalization after Activision Blizzard and ahead of Take-Two Interactive and Ubisoft as of March 2018.[4]
Founded and incorporated on May 27, 1982, by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games. EA published numerous games and productivity software for personal computers and later experimented on techniques to internally develop games, leading to the 1987 release of Skate or Die!. The company would later decide in favor of abandoning their original principles and acquiring smaller companies that they see profitable, as well as annually releasing franchises to stay profitable.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games of established franchises, including Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Medal of Honor, Command & Conquer, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Army of Two, Titanfall, and Star Wars, as well as the EA Sports titles FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live, NHL, and EA Sports UFC.[5] Their desktop titles appear on self-developed Origin, an online gaming digital distribution platform for PCs and a direct competitor to Valve's Steam and Epic Games' Epic Games Store. EA also owns and operates major gaming studios such as EA Tiburon in Orlando, EA Vancouver in Burnaby, DICE in Sweden and Los Angeles, BioWare in Edmonton and Austin, and Respawn Entertainment.
Connection with Disney[]
In 1994, ABC and EA formed Creative Wonders, a joint venture that published children's computer games. Disney fully acquired ABC in 1996, and kept its stake in the publisher. In 1998, EA and Disney sold Creative Wonders to The Learning Company.
Electronic Arts' third-party publishing house Electronic Arts Distribution originally signed a publishing deal with Disney Interactive in 2001 to allow the division to publish and distribute a few of Disney Interactive's titles in North America and Europe.
From 2001 until 2002, Electronic Arts served as the British and Irish distributor for Disney Interactive's PC titles, replacing Infogrames UK. In 2002, Disney Interactive changed their distributor to Ubi Soft.
After this brief partnership, Electronic Arts and Disney signed a deal in 2013 for EA to be the exclusive publisher and developer of Star Wars licensed games for core audiences.
Disney's Touchstone Pictures subsidiary also released Need for Speed in many regions, which was an adaptation of EA's game franchise of the same name.
Additionally characters from Electronic Arts owned franchises appeared in Wreck-It Ralph.
Disney games released by Electronic Arts[]
- Creative Wonders (all games released between 1996-98)
- Pooh's Party Game: In Search of the Treasure (2001, as Electronic Arts Distribution - Publishing and Distribution in North America)
- Disney Golf (2002, as Electronic Arts Distribution - Publishing and Distribution in North America, Distribution in Europe)
- Disney's Party (2002, as Electronic Arts Distribution - Publishing and Distribution in North America and Europe)
- Kingdom Hearts (2002, as Square Electronic Arts - Publishing and Distribution in North America)
- Star Wars: Battlefront (2015)
- Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017)
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)
- The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu (2020)
- Star Wars: Squadrons (2020)
- Disney Sorcerer's Arena (2021-2024; took over publishing after acquiring the game's developer, Glu Mobile)
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023)
Gallery[]