Major retailers’ conservative holiday plans are causing unforeseen problems for publishers, EA CEO John Riccitiello said in a conference call with investors.

Riccitiello said that "some major retailers are reducing their year-end inventories, and in particular, those inventories for titles not in the top five sell-thru for November and December," according to a report on the call from MTV Multiplayer.

Because retailers are expecting to sell less this year, they’re reducing the amount of inventory they’d normally have as wiggle room by the end of December. In other words, they’re holding off on replenishing depleted stock in order to raise "sell-through" rates, or the ratio of games bought from a publisher to games sold. Unfortunately for EA, this leaves them with fewer orders and more unsold inventory.

Despite this, Riccitiello isn’t showing regret over the company’s titles this year. "We did manage to put quality and innovation on the board in 2008, and we’re very proud of that," he said.

Unfortunately, innovation doesn’t always equal sales, especially in concert with the recent economic downturn.

"Many times what happens with a new intellectual property is, the first edition doesn’t generate the units that subsequent editions could generate," Riccitiello said, "and I would argue that in this particular year the consumer may have been more reticent to take risk than that might otherwise be. It was a very crowded holiday."

In an effort to raise revenue, Riccitiello plans to reduce the number of products offered by EA in 2009. While that could mean a dearth of new IP in the comming year, gamers who enjoyed original 2008 EA products Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, or Warhammer Online won’t have to worry about them being on the chopping block.

"Dead Space looks like a long term big winner for us. We expect Warhammer will continue to perform very very well, its life measured in multiples of years, not multiples of months," Riccitiello said. "Mirror’s Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed. That one’s going to go forward. We’ll probably be looking at some issues around the design to make sure a strong IP is married with strong business."

Riccitiello was not specific when asked where the product cuts would come from, but did outline the cuts would be "not in sports, and divided relatively evenly between core and casual."

EA will also shift focus to games with online components that provide continuing revenue, such as Warhammer Online and Rock Band.

"Rock Band is one of the top franchises in the industry overall, and it’s one that I think consumers are finding themselves delighted with when they pick it up," Riccitiello said. "We are definitely seeing an ongoing shift to online gameplay and monetization. It’s not just an Asia phenomenon, it’s a global phenomenon."

As far as the future bread winners, Riccitiello points to emergent online business as the future of the company.

"In terms of the new business models: mobile, online, direct to consumer - those are long term growth opportunities," Riccitiello said. "They’re putting material points on the board this year, and they will grow disproportionately next year and years to come."