Looks like EA has quite a bit up its sleeve for the next fiscal year, and their third quarter fiscal year 2010 report confirms the existence of a “hit-driven market” in its forward-looking statements.

For instance, we can look forward to new installments of Tiger Woods Golf and “the world’s most beautiful game,” FIFA ‘11, not to mention console versions of The Sims 3. EA is definitely taking its mantra of “fewer and bigger” to heart – it’s their version of quality over quantity, since their top 20 games amount to 80% of their sales numbers.

Whereas normally that would just mean making the investors happy, this time, it looks like it means making gamers happy as well, with a new Dead Space installment and second Dragon Age title (both also bound for handhelds/mobile as well as consoles and PCs) on the way in the first few months of 2011. Dragon Age, in particular, was called “easily sequeled,” which is a new verb to me that seems to imply no new graphical or engine improvements. During this afternoon’s conference call, execs also noted “something far-reaching” coming to Mass Effect in 2011. (In other words, BioWare is going to be busy.) One thing that won’t make some gamers happy is the exclusion of NCAA Basketball from the FY ‘11 games list – looks like that series is coming to an end.

The main focus of the call today was to recap their third-quarter earnings. EA is doing a lot better now than last year, losing only about $80 million compared to the over $600 million from 2008. A large part of that is due to the quality of their titles improving (19 of their titles received an 80 or better on Metacritic during the last year). EA is cutting operations costs, both by changing employees over to their “mobile” division (as they’re expecting a 26% increase in sales of mobile titles) and just plain reducing the number of employees they have.

Execs also made an interesting note regarding hardware sales (I don’t know where they got these numbers, but it’s interesting): Apparently sales of both the Wii and Xbox 360 are down, and PS3 sales have gone up 43%. (Perhaps the latter should be attributed to lower prices and better advertising?) With the above-referenced Mass Effect mention, maybe the PS3 is finally getting a port to address this new group.

EA also revealed that they’re now designing games with Project Natal and PlayStation Arc in mind – they aren’t projecting any sales related to these peripherals (you know, just in case they’re giant failures), but games specific to these motion control systems WILL be available on the Natal and Arc launch days.

Electronic Arts is also focusing intently on their online divisions. Every title for the next fiscal year will (theoretically) have downloadable content available or an online component. Tiger Woods ‘11 will have Tiger Woods Online, for instance. They’ve supposedly been building up to this through the registration processes for The Sims 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. The first big test this year, Mass Effect 2’s Cerberus Network, had a few hiccups in the process, so let’s hope that they get at least that much down. EA execs claim that these downloadable additions mean that more consumers are buying top titles and playing them longer, resulting in big increases in revenue per user, which is precisely what they’re after, of course.

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