On Tuesday afternoon, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello (left) announced that the publisher would not meet its revenue projections for the 2009 fiscal year.

Personnel cuts and cancellation of some underperforming projects will follow.

Yesterday, Wedbush-Morgan analyst Michael Pachter took EA to task in a note to investors:

After market close on Tuesday, EA significantly lowered its guidance due to weaker than expected sales...  Management stated that it will not be able to achieve its previously issued FY:09 guidance...

 

With the stock hovering near a seven-year low, management continued its recent history of disappointment. We are no longer confident that EA is taking the steps necessary to achieve its FY:11 goals of $6 billion in revenue and $1.5 billion in operating profit. 

Ouch! Pretty strong stuff from Pachter, so we asked him point-blank: Is John Riccitiello's job in jeopardy? After all, in addition to missing his projected numbers, Riccitiello also led EA through a protracted - some would say, embarrassing - and ultimately failed attempt to acquire Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive this year. Here's what Pachter told us:

Does Riccitiello survive is a function of a lot of things… He’s probably not in trouble yet. He’s probably in trouble in eight months or a year if this new strategy shows no traction…

 

You really just have to be prudent in your spending. Don’t spend ahead of revenues. So don’t spend $500 million chasing casual online games until you have $500 million in profit from them.  So you just scale that stuff back, a hundred million here and a hundred million there and you’re talking real money [saved].

 

[EA is] being punished by trying to do too much at once. They’re too ambitious. They’re launching way too many games at once, so it's crazy to believe they’re all going to work. And it's too early to give up on any of them. And then they launched in kind a holiday window that’s really tough.

 

I think everything's performing fine. It's not like Mirrors Edge is selling zero units; it's selling two million. And Dead Space is selling two million or three million. It's crazy that these guys would think that they couldn’t maybe make these games again. Mirror's Edge is more of a victim of just coming out in the midst of Far Cry, Gears, Fallout. How could you expect that game to fly? It got lost. I don’t think its an indictment of what they were doing...

What about Riccitiello's comments to the effect that EA needs to revise its Wii strategy? Hit the jump for the rest of Pachter's thoughts on EA.

EA holiday titles Mirror's Edge, Rock Band 2 and Need For Speed: Undercover are all failing to meet sales goals, according to Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian.

Future sales of Spore and Warhammer Online may not be so great, either.

As reported by CVG, Sebastian predicts that EA will cut jobs and drop some underperforming game franchises in response. In a note to investors Sebastian writes:

While the video game industry continues to show some resilience in the face of a very challenging consumer environment, strength does not appear to be across the board, and we believe that several EA titles are underperforming expectations at retail.

 

Specifically, our checks indicate that sell-through trends of key holiday releases Need for Speed Undercover, Rock Band 2, and Mirror's Edge remain mixed, which may reflect some fatigue overall in the music and racing genres.

We believe further cost and franchise reductions are likely. Importantly, we believe EA is continuing to review its cost structure and franchise base, and it is possible that management will announce further cuts in headcount and the development pipeline (including existing franchises) over the coming quarters.

Although its video game business has apparently not been affected - yet - Sony announced today that it will cut 8,000 jobs from the electronics side of the house.

Bloomberg reports that Sony will also close some manufacturing facilities and delay planned investments in others.

A Sony statement said:

These initiatives are in response to the sudden and rapid changes in the global economic environment.