Right now many of its top franchises, such as Madden NFL and FIFA Soccer, are based on content owned by others. License payments on those games make them far less profitable than fully owned titles. Rival game maker Activision Blizzard, by contrast, owns its major franchises, such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero. Largely for that reason, Activision had a non-GAAP operating margin in 2008 of 24.5% compared with EA's minus-4% in the year to March 2009, according to Todd Greenwald, an analyst with Signal Hill Capital Group.
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