Electronic Arts provided distribution support for APB, whose bankrupt studio is being sold off; today a senior EA executive said the game's poor reviews were somewhat predicted internally and suggested to Realtime Worlds.
"We did suggest that where it landed from a review score standpoint was where we thought it was going to land from a review score standpoint," David DeMartini, the head of EA Partners, told GamesIndustry.biz.
"We were having a lot of discussions with them about where we thought the title was, at least advising them so that they could make a decision," he added. "I imagine they think they could have done some things differently at this point, but hindsight's always 20-20."
APB is currently a 58 on Metacritic, 61 on GameRankings, so that "suggestion" sounds more like a vote of no-confidence. DeMartini expressed sympathy for Realtime Worlds, which this week entered administration - the U.K. analogue to bankruptcy reorganization in the U.S.
"I feel bad for David [Jones, the Realtime Worlds CEO], I feel bad for everybody on that team," he said. "It's just sad all the way around. It's not great for the industry either because the team gets tarnished, the game gets tarnished, customers aren't exactly delighted with the experience that they got."
EA of course is publishing BioWare's upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, but DeMartini is confident that game will be a success. Still "It's a really hard category to make a game. You spend tens of millions of dollars and that's a lot of a risk."
EA Anticipated APB's Review Scores [GamesIndustry.biz]