News EA: '$60 games are exploitative'

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/23/ea-60-games-are-exploitative/1

 

Are you SURE that was EA?
I bet that guy loses his job...

 

wait arent these called DEMOs which PC industry has nearly stopped now and opted for beta access on pre-order with the previous in the series blah blah blah blah.

 

Well said. Won't happen any time soon, though.

 

I never thought i'd be saying this but, I'm starting to like EA after many years of hate

 

free to play just screams of micro transactions to me, i will not touch those games at all

 

Oh well thats nice,

60.00 USD = 36.8429 GBP

To be honest, if its a great game that I'll get a lot of playtime from, like GTA4, Total War, Fallout 3, or BFBC2 or I'd happily pay full price, but I certainly don't want to pay full price for some badly coded film tie in.

EA have certainly bucked up their ideas. BUT they did just release Dead Space 2 with an 'online activation code' that you have to enter to play the MP - basically means that if you sell it on the next person who buys it can't play MP unless they buy a new code. Ouch.

 

I like that man.

 

...I'm a single player guy.
Multiplayer is nice for the occasional bout, I like to be able to play, pause, continue when I find the time, not when my team's rushing.

 

Aren't most new releases around £40 now? (i.e more than $60)

Also, the price tag is only one facet of the exploitation. The others include restrictive DRM, concerted efforts to discourage the second-hand market, and shorter games at launch complemented by copious DLC releases, most of which are non-transferable.

So if you buy a game online at release date, and the subsequent DLC packs, you can expect to spend nearly £100, none of which you can recover by selling it on once you're done with it.

I wonder if Bit could do an article comparing the (single player) play time of older games with newer ones and come up with a £/h value score. I have a feeling that the value (to the customer, that is) has been slowly draining out of PC gaming for a while now.

 

I just checked on steam, and in my country, crysis 2 is selling for $69.99 US witht the publisher listed as Electronic Arts....
other similar priced titles include Homefront at $79.99, dragon age 2 at $69.99, and COD black ops at $89.99
Borderlands was also about $80 for something like 18 months after release.

This guy is compoletely right. I dont consider anything over $40US, as it's just too damn much money, and it doesnt help that I know people in the US get the same games with the same currency for a lot less most of the time.

 

Don't be fooled, free to play isn't really free to play. Im sure they are making plenty of money from micro payments (spend £X get bonus Y). I'm also sure customers who do buy themselfs an advantage could easierly end up spending more than $60.

I suspect this chap wants all games to be sold the same way as they do, thus levelling the playing field for all.

 

Games come in varying amounts of quality and value, why shouldn't there price be variable too? If two games aren't of the same value, why should they artificially have the same price? Runs afoul of economic theory I'd imagine, games are not created equal, and so are not a commodity, yet we have artificial commodity pricing.

 

This, from EA the company that publishes yearly game updates for £35 games that involve little more than a slight change in team strip?

What a joke.

 

You know it is possible for one organisation to contain individuals with differing viewpoints. My guess would be that the motivation for giving this interview was so that he could point at some positive responses to it in order to justify to others within EA the model that he is developing. People on forums like these are those most likely to recommend or slate a title and so are a valuable target market. Releasing statements like these tests the mood of that market.

 

US prices are quoted without tax.

So 36.8429 + VAT = £44.26 shelf price

Wait, how much was the latest COD? £55?

 

$60 isn't really exploitation, it's more the norm.

You get to call exploitation when a developer takes the game they meant to release, cuts it up, and then makes you spend $30 after release to play the whole story, a-la Mafia 2.

 

Although it is the norm as of late, it would still be nice to have a price-drop.

 

I suspect they are saying this in order to promote DLC etc, ie

A game used to cost $60.

Under the new business model it costs $40 to get a massively cut-down version, and another $40 to get DLC (much of which is available at launch, or even on the disc and just needs unlocking) to take it back up to the full game.