Earnings Labs

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA)

Q3 2009 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 3, 2009

$202.12

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Electronic Arts Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2009 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call to Ms. Tricia Gugler, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tricia Gugler

President

Welcome to our third quarter fiscal 2009 earnings call. Today on the call we have John Riccitiello, our Chief Executive Officer; and Eric Brown, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that you may find copies of our SEC filings, our earnings release and a replay of this web cast on our web site at investor.ea.com. Shortly after the call, we will post a copy of our prepared remarks on our website. Throughout this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings release provides a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP measures. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from, a substitute for, or superior to our GAAP results, and we encourage all investors to consider all measures before making an investment decision. All comparisons made in the course of this call are against the same period for the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Please see the supplemental information on our website for our trailing twelve month segment shares, our Q4 releases, and a summary of our financial guidance. During the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. We caution you that actual events and results may differ materially. We refer you to our most recent Form 10-Q for a discussion of risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. We make these statements as of February 3, 2009, and disclaim any duty to update them. Now I would like to turn the call over to John.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Tricia. Earlier today we announced our third quarter results came in below our expectations and that we have significantly reduced our financial outlook for fiscal year ‘09. On today's call, I will discuss our performance for fiscal year ’09, including our cost-cutting actions. I will outline the key conclusions we drew out from the year. I will then outline our outlook for the industry in 2009 and EA's plans and financial guidance for fiscal year ’10. Eric will review our holiday quarter results, discuss our cost-cutting initiatives in more detail, and provide a specific guidance for fiscal year ’09 and ’10. I will wrap up with a few closing thoughts and then we will open it up for Q&A. We are disappointed with our holiday quarter and our FY09 performance. These results point to three conclusions, which are incorporated into our strategies going forward. First, we need to improve our approach to bringing key titles to market. Consumers have become more cautious and we need longer lead times on marketing and in some cases more productive investment of our publishing resources. In short, we need to start earlier and focus more. Second, in this environment, we believe our operating expenses are too high and need to come down. Third, the Nintendo Wii is even more important than one year ago. It is a clear leader in this cycle. In calendar year ’08, we were the number three publisher in this platform in both North America and in Europe, but we need to move further up on the charts. Now, I would like to cover our holiday quarter. First a few comments on the industry. Industry software sales in the holiday quarter were up 15% in North America and we estimate 10% in Europe. These holiday quarter results, while below…

Eric Brown

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. For Q3, we delivered non-GAAP revenue of $1.74 billion, which was flat to last year and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.56 versus $0.90 a year ago. On a GAAP basis, revenue was $1.65 billion, up 10% year-over-year and the GAAP diluted loss per share was $2 versus a loss per share of $0.10 a year ago. This quarter our GAAP EPS includes one-time charges for goodwill impairment and a tax valuation allowance, which together comprise a $1.91 in GAAP EPS loss. I will touch on these in more detail shortly. Key titles in the quarter were FIFA ‘09, our bestselling title with 7.8 million copies, up 4% year-to-date over last year's FIFA ’08. In Europe, we estimate it was the number one title across all platforms in the holiday quarter. Need for Speed Undercover sold 5.2 million copies, down 7% from last year's Need for Speed Prostreet. Sell-through was up in Europe year-over-year but down in North America. LITTLEST PET SHOP sold 2.8 million copies on the Wii and DS and PC, a great start for a new IP; and charted in the top 5 on the NDS in both North America and Europe in the holiday quarter. In addition, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, Madden NFL 09, and NBA Live 09 each sold over 1 million copies. Madden 09 was the number six title across all platforms in North America for calendar year ‘08. From EA partners, Rock Band 2 in partnerships with MTV Harmonix sold 1.9 million copies, and Left 4 Dead, in partnership with Valve, sold 1.8 million copies. In our digital-to-direct businesses, we generated $116 million in revenue, up 28% year-over-year with strong performance across all units including POGO. Warhammer Online now has over 300,000 paying subscribers in North America…

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Eric. Before we take your questions, I want to close with a few thoughts. First, we are optimistic for the industry in the year ahead. Second, we have hit the reset button on our cost structure. We have not lowered our ambitions, we have knocked our cost structure to a more conservative revenue projections. We have made the hard calls, now it’s all about execution. And finally, we have been and will continue to be focused on game quality and innovation. Our FY10 slate is very promising. Let me tell you about some of the titles I’m particularly excited about this year. In Q1, EA Sports will drive our Wii initiative with the debut of the new tennis franchise from EA Sports Active, a new fitness product. Also from EA Sports is the return of our acclaimed Fight Night franchise. At the end of Q1, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince is releasing in conjunction with the motion picture from Warner Brothers. The main event is the launch of Sims 3 on June 3, a brand new experience with a host of online features. I’d urge you to check out the new Sims website. In Q2, we will launch Need for Speed Shift. This is the first title under our new approach to development. Our Nintendo title Need For Speed Nitro will follow in Q3. In July and August, we delivered the one-two punch [ph] of NCAA Football and Madden NFL. In Q3, we will launch Dragon Age, an epic new IP from BioWare. We are introducing Brutal Legend, a heavy-metal action fantasy starring Jack Black, and NBA Live, a franchise that has made a big rebound with critics and consumers will be back with a leap forward with the Dynamic DNA online feature. In Q4, Battlefield Bad Company will be back on consoles from our Dice Studio in Stockholm. BioWare will release Mass Effect II on multiple platforms and the Redwood Shores game that gave us Dead Space will launch a brand new intellectual property based on Dante’s Inferno. In addition, our partners at MTV Harmonix have announced a new music title based on the Beatles to be released in our FY10. With that, we would be happy to take your questions.

Tricia Gugler

Operator

Operator, we would like to open the call to questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) And the first question comes from Jeetil Patel with Deutsche Bank. Jeetil Patel – Deutsche Bank: Hi, guys. You have got 14% fewer SKUs coming out in fiscal ‘10 versus fiscal ‘09, I guess can you walk us through from the down 14% in the SKUs to the plus – flat to plus five – call it plus 5% on the revenue side? I guess what are you implying in terms of productivity versus change in FX et cetera, and then also just your pricing assumptions for the industry as a whole?

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So, there is a lot pieces to your question there. I’ll do my level best to wrap them up in one answer. First off, your point-to-point comparisons on SKUs I think is a tad misleading because it incorporates the move of some SKUs relatively right from the end of fiscal ‘09 to the beginning of fiscal ’10. So actually think your low teens estimate understates the shift in SKUs and the reduction in our investment in new R&D. The second observation I would make is in terms of mapping that to revenue growth, I'll start at the strategic level and point out that we are very purposely reducing the number of SKUs, in particular our secondary and tertiary SKUs and/or titles that are too close to the breakeven point to justify being developed and launched. So we believe we are making a move to enhance our ability to focus, create bigger hits in the marketplace, and all things being equal, generate at least as much, if not more revenue. Now things frankly are not all equal and I think you need to take this question apart carefully. If I were to do this from a modeling perspective from the outside and looking at Electronic Arts, I would probably start with the observation that we have highlighted today in the call that our distribution revenue is down approximately $300 million year over year. I think that's a very important starting point, and that's a lower margin business, and one of the reasons our gross margins were up so sharply is the reduction in that as a percentage of our revenue. From there, there is half a dozen different ways you might want to cut it, but if you were to cut it like we did, you would look at it by…

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Edward Williams with BMO Capital Markets. Edward Williams – BMO Capital Markets: John, just a follow up on Jeetil’s question a little bit, if you look at the unit assumptions on some of the key franchises, key annual franchises, Madden, NBA, Sims [ph], Need for Speed, et cetera, am I correct to assume that you are assuming those franchises, at least on a dollar basis, are going to go down a little bit? And then as we look at things like the Sims that have non-annual launches, how are you looking at that products performing in FY10 versus their prior launches?

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So, in the case of everything you have mentioned in your list of sequels, you are correct. We have been slightly down. That's our base scenario. Of course, that is not what we are setting out to achieve, but we believe that’s a prudent forecast in today's environment. In terms of the rest of our slate, some of which we have great references for like Sims 3 and others, where we really need to look longer back in history at our competition, like a Dragon Age, to see how that might perform in the marketplace with some competitors out in the past year being more close to that in its performance. And in general, we have used I’d say more conservative than not reference point. So I'm not going to give you particular unit volumes on the call for any of our titles. But we haven’t anything sort of pops into the top five, or that anything has got any sort of extraordinary revenue outcomes associated with it. We're hopeful that that will happen in the year, but that has not been our experience in the last 12 months, and we have chosen to take a realistic perspective on what is going to happen and what we can count on.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Justin Post of Merrill Lynch. Justin Post – Merrill Lynch: Thank you. John, can you talk about where you are on the margins for each of your labels and how much you think you can get improvement next year, and how do you measure your investment, because you are investing for 2010, 2011 and 2012, are you going to try to balance that versus delivering on the dollar next year?

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

When you ask about margins, there is really two margins you are probably thinking about. One is our gross profit percentage and the other is our operating margins pre overhead. And I'm not going to give you the specific numbers on them, but trust we’d venture a very diligent planning process, and we're very close to all of those numbers. I would start by telling you that the gross profit percentages in all three businesses are very healthy. The Sims/Play label is very strong driven by a heady mix of TC associated with the Sims 3 launch. The Sports label is strong and robust, particularly as we move into more owned or near owned intellectual property, such as EA Sports Active. And the games label has always had strong gross profit margins as a consequence of being heavily dominated by owned intellectual properties. So, gross profit in all three businesses look healthy in the coming year. The primary driver in terms of differentiating these businesses on an operating margin basis is R&D investment. And what you can see for both the sports label and Sims/ – we're calling in Play now, the Sims/Casual, these have R&D numbers below 20%. They are very strong businesses. R&D is tight and aligned with where they should be for businesses of this scale. We're very pleased with the return on investment on R&D that we have had and expect to achieve in the coming year. We continue to see and I'm not going to give the specific numbers on this, higher R&D as a percentage for our games label. It is by far our largest unit, and if I were looking at that, I would make a couple of observations as to the why. One is we look very carefully at our investment per…

Operator

Operator

Moving on to Ben Schachter with UBS. Ben Schachter – UBS: Given the change in the macro and some more things at the company, can you talk about how you are looking at acquisitions differently today than you were in the past? Then also if you have any thoughts on PS3 development and where you're thinking on that platform? Thanks.

Eric Brown

Chief Financial Officer

This is Eric. I will take the first part of that question. Regards to M&A, our position today is very similar to what we discussed in the last call. We are taking a very measured view, not looking at large-scale M&A. You would look to us to do a couple small deals in the foreseeable future in the next couple of quarters. We are very focused on the operational aspects of our business. We will just go forward on our planning process, we have slimmed down by becoming more concentrated, and we will spend more time, at least in the short term there. So our position today is pretty much what we had on the call with you late last year.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So on PS3 development, actually I would tell you that the way we look at development is really in three buckets, if I just exclude mobile and Pogo for a minute. We think it is online games like what we're doing with our BioWare-Lucas or Lucas-BioWare partnership around the Star Wars property, and what we're doing with Warhammer, and what we are doing with some of our MSGs. A second bucket is what we are doing with Nintendo Wii, which is a major focus for us in the coming year. And the third category is Xbox 360 and PS3. The reason we put that into one bucket is the lion’s share of titles developed for these platforms are common. Of course, we work with each of the first party platforms on unique titles and might take advantage of the particular features of that platform, and we're very proud to have great marketing partnerships around key exclusive titles, both in the PS3 and the Xbox 360. But in general, think of us as having those three buckets, PS3, Xbox 360, bucked one; bucket two is the Wii; and bucket three is online. And in terms of title count, I mean in emphasis, we have roughly an even balance between PS3/Xbox 360 being one bucket in terms of number of titles, just over 20, and just over 20 on Nintendo Wii. So in terms of our console, you might argue that we are evenly balanced between the – against, if you will, the installed base. Nintendo is the leader, they are getting half our emphasis in terms of title count.

Operator

Operator

And this question comes from Brent Thill with Citi. Brent Thill – Citigroup: Thanks. John, just on the international business, it seems to be really lagging the growth you are seeing in North America, what is causing this dislocation, and what do you think helps turning around?

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

I actually think what you're probably seeing more than almost anything in our international business is really two factors that sort of make it look at a little bit different. One is a very substantial shift in FX, which on a back translation basis, causes our international businesses to look small, relatively small in growth rate. During the year, the dollars was dropping and the euro was rising, was precisely the opposite, and we looked like – our international business was generating outsized performance. The second factor is the primary beneficiary of our Rock Band business has been North America. It was a gigantic revenue contributor to the business in North America in the tail end of our fiscal 2008 and all of fiscal 2009. Normalizing for these two, and looking at them, say, for example market share performance, they are very, very similar.

Operator

Operator

And this question comes from Daniel Ernst with Hudson Square Research. Daniel Ernst – Hudson Square Research: Yes. Thanks, good evening. Thanks for taking the call. On your Nintendo Wii strategy, to date you have done a couple of things to get at – one being the Boom Blox new IP, and the other being taking franchises that you are doing well with and making them, I guess Wii centric with your all play feature, and also assume with FaceBreaker, you added K.O. Party in it. It sounds like you are kind of doing the same thing for the coming fiscal year, with Need For Speed having a different version, I think Nitro is its name, for the Wii. Can you talk about how you think you’re going to be doing it differently this coming fiscal year such that you are more successful relative to what you have done so far? Thanks.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So basically you live, you learn, you adjust and improve. And so this year's title slate is a significant improvement from last year because we learned what didn't work last year, which we are not sequelling, and we are emphasizing hard those things that do perform. In situations within our EA Sports portfolio, we had outsized strength in titles like Tiger and FIFA. We are sort of bringing those back in new and enhanced ways. In titles where we had lesser performance, we're adjusting to learn from those experiences. But I actually would highlight a couple of things to more directly answer your question as opposed to staying up at the theory level. One is, we're going strong, right out of the box, with EA Sports. EA Sports Active is taking advantage of the world's fascination with fitness, the strength of the Wii Fit platform, with a spectacular title in my judgment at least that's coming out in our first quarter. In fact I'm heading up to Vancouver tonight, the development city of our EA Sports Active business. If you go to the web, you can learn a little bit more about it. Peter Moore has been vocal on it with a number of press announcements. He is the President of our sports label. It looks like a very strong entry to me, and frankly a brand new category for Electronic Arts. The second thing that is coming out in the quarter is we are launching our tennis SKU, our tennis title, and initially we only, and following it up with other franchises. This takes a spectacular advantage of the unique controller, I probably don't have to go too far to explain why that controller in your hands sort of feels more like a tennis racket than other controllers might.…

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Colin Sebastian with Lazard Capital Markets. Colin Sebastian – Lazard Capital Markets: Thanks, good afternoon. First of all, in terms of the product portfolio, there were a number of your core franchises that you didn't talk about for the next fiscal year, so I'm curious. First of all, is there any franchises that didn't make the cut? And then secondly, are you implementing any new technology in the development process to improve game quality or save on costs or are you happy with the tools you have at your disposal? Thanks.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So, yes, there were titles. I don't think you would think of them as core titles that didn't make the cut. We’ve clearly made some moves on titles like Playground and Bogie and others. But one of the things that we’ve elected to do on this call is to not dwell a lot on what we are discontinuing. We’d thought we’d rather say this is more about the numbers. There's a lot of personal emotion that gets wrapped up in individual games. We’ve just been through in the process of managing our way through 12 facility closures and 1,100 person lay off. Basically, just for purposes of sensitivity, we think it is better to keep it at that level. In terms of tools, we have actually made some good progress. One of the things we have done is, we have consolidated around the core engines. For example, on the games label, we're using core engine attack [ph] and spreading it across a number of titles in our Redwood Shores Studio. We are doing something very similar with our Dice Studio with an engine we titled Frostbite. We have propagated effectively a technology that you first saw in our NBA Street franchise, that’s now used in a number of our games titles, sports titles, which is how individuals NPCs and player characters are animated. At this point in time, the lion's share of our titles, in fact, well north of 80% of our titles have some level of common code that can be considered core. So one of the reasons we’re able to put together such a strong slate for FY10, while reducing expenses is because we're taking advantage of some of these things.

Eric Brown

Chief Financial Officer

I would add, the other thing that we're doing in terms of tools is a technology that we use to create builds, push builds, automate testing and enable distributed development in QA, both in-house and offshore. This is all working better. The net result of that is we're expecting to move these processes to lower cost locations versus we are today looking to the end of FY09.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Tony Gikas with Piper Jaffray. Tony Gikas – Piper Jaffray: Hi, good afternoon guys. You have given guidance on fiscal ‘10 relatively early and I'm wondering what gives you such confidence with the consumer and the environment that we are in, in sector sales that you are willing to give guidance this far out? And in the latter part of the cycle, do you feel like sales are easier to predict, or do industry sales become a little more variable?

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Well, first off, I almost have to reframe your question a little bit to answer it accurately. Given our business circumstances, what we saw in Q3 and our expectations going forward, and what we have learned in calendar ‘08, we specifically pulled forward our full planning cycle up a quarter. So it is not about visibility, it is about completing the process, and we’ve completed the process a quarter earlier, put us in a position to guide a quarter earlier. One of the key reasons we did this is that we learned that one of the things that we weren’t doing as effectively as we might is the long lead marketing planning. Essentially, some of the most important decisions on our launch plans for our key titles was being held in favor of the planning process that needed to be locked down in sort of the February-March timeframe. We did this because we wanted to get the, if you will, our budgets locked so we can in fact get into marketing execution 90 or 120 days earlier. A key learning, we restructured our entire planning process around it. In terms of where we are in the cycle, you’d referenced that we are at the tail end of the cycle. I would actually suggest that that's probably not correct, or at least that I have a different take. I mean if you’ve listened to the commentary from both Sony and Microsoft in recent weeks at CES and other venues, their comments is they expect an extended cycle as do we. So we think it's more the middle of the cycle than it is the end of the cycle. And in terms of predictability, I would tell you that how we managed to develop our revenue forecast is based on sort of nothing blowing out past sort of reasonable base judgment expectations. And when you are using that as the base model for how you forecast, it is frankly a little bit more predictable. So we’ve introduced predictability into our forecasting by taking a slightly different approach.

Eric Brown

Chief Financial Officer

The other thing to add on to that is that looking at FY10 versus FY09, we talked about the revised deal of the distribution business. We are expecting that to be down, but we also have titles that we’ve moved from or used to be in FY09 into FY10. We touched on those, Sims 3, Harry Potter. These are net year-over-year pick-ups. So we've got kind of confidence and visibility on those – on those revenue streams. And also for fiscal ’10, we are going to get a full year of Warhammer subscription revenue. We talked about the fact that we are already at 300,000 subs. That is a very ratable and more predictable business, and so that is new for FY10 compared to fiscal ‘09. Next question please.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. The next question comes from Mike Hickey with Janco Partners. Mike Hickey – Janco Partners: Hi guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I was curious if you can note a little bit on your fiscal ‘10 sales expectations, if you could identify what you think are going to be your top five titles ex EA Sports and EA Partners? And then I have a follow-up please.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Ex-EA Sports and EA Partners? Mike Hickey – Janco Partners: Yes.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Sorry, I have never taken – I’d never do a top five without Madden or FIFA in it. But top five without Madden or FIFA, it is almost a trick question, but you know clearly Dragon Age is there, Sims 3 is there, Need for Speed SHIFT is there, Bad Company is there, and probably Harry Potter Half Blood Prince will be next in the list. That would get us to 5. One of the nice things about some of those Dragon Age PC, Harry Potter Half Blood Prince, and the Sims 3 are fairly easy for us to forecast and feel confident in given the state of development that these are in. Next question.

Operator

Operator

John Taylor – Arcadia Investment: Hi, I have got a couple as well here. So it looks like you are on track to do a little over 400 for the fiscal year in direct-to-consumer, and you are kind of forecasting a 500 number. So, I'm wondering, kind of how you are thinking about that growth rate as you go into fiscal ‘11 and forward, are we likely to see that accelerate, if so by how much? Kind of wondering maybe when out there, we might see a billion dollars kind of potential for that. So that this kind of the first one. The second one is, you talked a lot about cost management and it is – you know, given the market, given all the variables, it is awful hard to forecast unit sales, really what consumers are going to do. So you guys can control costs. I am wondering if with the mix shift to Nintendo and everything else that’s going on, what the implied breakeven unit delta might be? You don't need to tell us kind of what the average is, but I want to know how much it has come down by as you're thinking about that. And third is really easy, what are you assuming your Wii market share is likely to be in fiscal ‘10? Thanks.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

I will take the first and the third and I will give Eric the breakeven question, I didn't quite track. So, in terms of – sorry about that JT. So in terms of the direct-to-digital, one of the things I would point out to you is that the mid-20s growth rate that you projected for our direct digital business based on what we have told you and putting the pieces together is very close to our own expectations. But I would tell you that I generally don't think of it as a composite other than preparing for earnings calls. Really what it is, it is Pogo, it is Mobile, it is MMOs, it is a series of MSGs, it is ultimately a new MMO that we are going to be launching in joint partnership with LucasArts. And so it is a series of businesses that feel like they have gotten good tailwinds that are growing, Pogo and Mobile in particular. It is secondarily a series of things that are really discontinuous that are adding to our business. Good examples of discontinuous, especially late last summer, the launch of Warhammer, the revenue stream where it was only a cost stream. When we launch our next MMO it will be, we believe, a much larger revenue stream where it has been only a cost stream. And we talked about Battlefield Heroes, our Need for Speed online, the number of launches we got in Asia, which we really don't have time to get into on the call today. But these are discontinuous activities that generate big steps forward in revenue. Because I don't – I am not here to tell you that I've got a prognostication of when it’s a billion dollars. But I would tell you that a major contributor to that will be our BioWare, LucasArts joint venture MMO. That will have an awful lot to do with that last step to $1 billion. Eric, do you want to take the breakeven point?

Eric Brown

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. I won't give a kind of a quantitative change on the breakeven point for Wii SKUs, but I would offer the following three observations. One, as you look to FY10, we are to be getting the benefit of some learning curve. So FY’ 09 was the first year of all play mode in sports. So we have the benefit of that behind us and we intend to do better when we iterate in terms of the efficiency. Secondly, we are developing expertise in certain of our own studio locations in terms of Wii development. So again, we are advancing the learning curve there. And the third point is that, I touched upon this earlier, we are expanding our generic, proven [ph] library so that we can for, for example, QA and final a product, a Wii-specific product more efficiently than we would using more manual processes. So we feel that these three things are going to make us more efficient in terms of overall Wii output. John Taylor – Arcadia Investment: So in terms of Wii market shares, let me tell you that overall what we guided to on the call is about 5% revenue growth and hence no market share growth. Of course, our goal internally would be to gain at least a market share point in the year. So let me give you a first hand observation how to look to that and maybe the easiest way to look to that is that on our distribution business, we lose about $300 million and then we have taken three titles and moved them into the next year, which adds about $300 million. So what does that tell me if you are up 5% in a 5% industry you are flat. So our internal models in aggregate don't show market share growth in terms of our guidance for FY10. Having said that, we do have high hopes to see growth on the Wii, given our titles slate in the year, which is stronger than last year. And, you know, to be honest with you, I don't think we will be satisfied if we didn't pick up something there. And of course that is important given that some of the legacy platforms like the PS2, where we have enjoyed strong share over time are in decline. So, we wanted to see market share growth there. I'm not giving you specific numbers. I know I'm not answering your question directly but I didn't want to make sure you've got an understanding what is required for our $4.3 billion is really the new IPs that we moved out of ‘09 and ‘10 offsetting the decline in distribution towards the whole shift.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Heath Terry with FBR Capital Markets. Heath Terry – FBR Capital Markets: Great, thanks. Just on the three titles that were shifted, are those shifts purely marketing related or should we also think that there was a development component to this? And then when you look at the Wii platform strategically, is there a structural difference, either because of the customer base or the gameplay format or Nintendo’s development skill that causes you to plan for EA’s ability to gain share on that platform to be limited, or can you ultimately with the right strategy get to an equal share with your other platforms.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

So, I'll take the second question first in terms of Wii. The – on the Wii, I would say it is structurally different in a number of ways relative to the PS3 and Xbox 360. One is the prevailing premium price. It is $10 a unit less than it is for Xbox 360 and PS3 games. Secondly, development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game, and that is really a function of the capacity of the hardware and the fact that it is not a high-definition gaming box. So we are not producing, you know, the number of – the amount of art for high-definition games. Third, there are differences in terms of the way the consumer proceeds with the brands. I think there is little doubt that Nintendo has an enviable position in terms of, sort of brand reputation relative to its own platform with its consumer base. And that is one of the reasons in the coming year, we have decided to make such a strong emphasis on quality. You will see we are taking great advantage of their new hardware addition with motion sensor, and that – what that is going to give us is the kind of gameplay we think will rival Nintendo on their own platform, and we are bringing marketing together in such a way that we think we can get noticed in ways that no other third party will. In terms of the three shifts, I would tell you that we were in a position, should we have wanted to or needed to, to ship all three titles in Q4 of FY09. So, they were ready to go at one level or another, but I will…

Tricia Gugler

Operator

Operator, we will take one more question.

Operator

Operator

And that question will come from Doug Creutz with Cowen & Company. Doug Creutz – Cowen & Company: Thanks. You guys talked about how you are going to lengthen your time to market for the advertising campaign. I think clearly that means more dollars. What has changed to make you think that’s the appropriate strategy and why do you get confidence that spending more on advertising is going to yield better revenue for your games? Thanks.

John Riccitiello

Chief Executive Officer

Just for clarity sake, we did not tell you that we are spending more necessarily. We said we will spend it differently. And what gives us confidence in this is frankly some work that we did within our marketing teams that basically took apart our marketing campaigns, one by one, month by month, sometimes week by week, program by program compared with the competition, where our spending lived relative to release-launch and post-launch windows, the types of vehicles that will use to create buzz and demand in each of those windows, how were they spaced out over time in terms of launch windows on the Christmas holiday, and came to conclude that we were under spending in the pre-launch month in demand generation and that had an impact in terms of buzz and demand for the product at presale levels and before. And that we were spiking a little bit too much right on top of the launch, and so those were some of the conclusions. We made other deeper conclusions associated with revenue mix, our promotions work, et cetera. We went to school on ourselves and came back with a different answer than the one we fielded in the marketplace for 2008, and felt we had a better opportunity if we did it differently. Not wanting to essentially ignore our own learning, we took a look at our Q4 slate and felt that it was too late to do what our learnings from Q3 ’08 and prior to that had taught us, and so we adjusted our Q4 end launches to reflect our current learning.

Tricia Gugler

Operator

Okay, thanks everyone for joining us today.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude today's conference. We do thank you for your participation today.