EA: all our games will have micro-transactions

"We are building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way; to get to a higher level," Jorgensen declared, "And consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of business."

Thoughts?

edited 27th Feb '13 2:00:53 PM by Thorn14

Man I love video games.

Uuggggghhhh.

No. I mean, I don't buy EA crap in the first place, but one business doing it for everything is just going to convince other businesses to do it for everything.

Huh?

I can't say I like this idea, but no-one's forcing you to pay extra, and if people weren't buying this stuff they wouldn't be doing it. They may be evil and money-grubbing, but somewhere out there gamers are allowing them to be that way.

edited 27th Feb '13 2:13:55 PM by artfulscruff

In theory the concept of "If it doesn't do any harm so what" makes sense, but I've seen MANY F 2 P MM Os do the same by making it where you pretty much HAVE TO buy the shit.

And I don't have a high enough opinion of EA to think they will avoid that.

edited 27th Feb '13 2:15:39 PM by Thorn14

I do see how it would be easy for it to end up in the situation where you "pretty much have to", but I'm hoping most developers will have more sense than that. People may be willing to let it slide in the case of free to play games, like you mentioned, but I really hope people aren't willing to put up with it when they've already paid full price for a game.

I'd rather have this than EA pushing for hardware anti-used game mechanisms in consoles, personally.

I'm starting to think they don't actually want us to buy their games, with all this cartoonish evilness.

Not surprised. Why should your games cost a mere $60 when they can cost $100 eventually?

Man, remember when EA was a good video game company?

No.

Here, they're pushing $110-120. And our dollar is pretty much equal to the US dollar right now.

edited 27th Feb '13 3:42:46 PM by Sabbo

Australia?

What the hell drives up your prices? Taxes? Companies deciding to fleece you? If the US has $5-15 DLC, what you paying?

I think it costs more money to export games there or something. There must be a reason beyond "Because they're Australian." Maybe they need to smuggle them in through cakes like nail files.

I don't pay any attention to DLC prices really, but I do know what caused out prices to be so high. The USD:AUD ratio, while currently ~1:1, used to be around 1:2 (Or is that 2:1? I can never seem to remember.)

Either way, I know that it used to be that our prices were actually fairly equal when your games cost $50 and ours $100. But then our economy improved and yours got worse.

Thanks, magnatar. Now the aussies can't even play the glory of Bit.Trip presents: Runner 2: Legend of Rhythm Alien Without shelling out enough cash for 2 copies! Fuck this country.

Let's see... that game costs $15 here. (Well, that's what Steam says anyway)

edited 27th Feb '13 3:59:23 PM by Sabbo

Good. Every should experience the glory of Bit.Trip presents: Runner 2: The Glory of Rhythm Alien at an affordable price.

Yep, same here. A while ago on Gamespot, there was mention of the idea that all games would eventually be free to play, with you just paying for add-ons. I was surprised to see people supporting that with phrases like "you play demos anyway, right? And it'll be like every game has a demo". But it wouldn't be like that at all; demos give a representation of what the full game will be like. If you have to pay for features, that's not representative of the full game.

I played City Of Heroes when it went F2P and all the good stuff had to be paid for, so it was basically a level-grinding simulator. Games going down that route is just another reason that next-gen is going to alienate the long-term gamers.

It seems EA forgot about the "Free" part though.

We're gonna get 60 dollar games with F 2 P scam systems.

Huh. Not that I was really buying many EA games in the first place, but this'll make me think twice on every single one.

It's not all bad though. Microtransactions seem to be what make the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer DLC free.

Oh, America. Why are all of your companies so terrible? :)

Seriously, Jesus. Game producers are corrupt as balls. The only way to go if you don't wanna be screwed over is self-publish, and the only way to build up a good enough image and enough profit to go freelance is to sell your game to a producer and recieve a cut of your work. The system is broken, it's always been broken, and EA is just drawing attention to the worsening condition of the industry.

Stereotypical anti-corporation nonsense around, EA's always been awful. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Just pray they never start bringing over budget titles: $2 for a low-res boxcar with bad collision detection? lolololno.

EA being a greedy company isn't really news, is it? This is just a latest example in a long line of stuff done by what used to be my first favourite games company that has tarnished that.

Does EA even have any games of notice besides Dead Space? Not trying to be controversial, just honestly wondering.

edited 27th Feb '13 4:54:27 PM by vgm2