Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts (EA) is an international developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of console, and computer games for a variety of operating systems and consoles.

Established in 1982 by 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. Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s. EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers, such as Maxis. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world's largest third-party publishers. In 2007 EA ranked 8th on the list of largest software companies in the world. In May 2008, the company reported net annual revenue of US$4.02 billion in fiscal year 2008. Currently, EA's most successful products are sports games published under its EA Sports label, games based on popular movie licenses such as Harry Potter and games from long-running franchises like Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, The Sims, Battlefield and the later games in the Burnout and Command & Conquer series.