News EA Sports to abandon physical media on PC

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/05/01/ea-sports-to-abandon-physical-media-on-pc/1

The EA Sports label of Electronic Arts will apparently completely drop the idea of physical distribution on the PC soon.

 

Guess I'm not going to buy any EA game from now on... I only use Steam... Their EA Download thingy is not good... Hate it really...

 

do the sports ones sell that well on pc anyway, thought they were always console big hitters

 

yeah please make availible by steam cant be arsed with another download manager

 

EA will support Steam. They are on there already.

 

Some games are, not all, for some territories, not all.

 

That EA DL manager is horrible for sure.

Surely 'EA Sports' customers (not usually the 'nerdy' gamer) would rather buy it in a shop?

 

and that is the worst part of digital distribution. a lack of global support for games, especially when there aren't any retail stores.

 

Publishers love microstransactions because they are able to make small amounts of content and then charge relatively inflated amounts for it. Two to five dollars for some new arenas or a new team in your sports game? That's about ten percent of the total cost of the game, yet probably far less than one percent of the work you'd normally have to do. It's great for getting more money out of customers over a longer period of time, too - not only do you save on cutting out the middleman, but you are able to keep rolling out new content for your games and keep your users hooked and paying.

I don't mind "microtransactions" if they're spent on legitimate, game-enhancing content, but I also would never buy a "free" game and then pay more than the usual asking price in the form of a hundred smaller payments just to get the whole thing. The Fallout 3 stuff, for example, that's DLC I consider worthwhile. About ten dollars for a good ten-plus hours of content (taking replay value into account) is well worth it in my mind, but the important thing is that such expansions enhance the game, not replace it. I really don't know if I could stomach having to buy my game piece-by-piece. With Fallout 3, the DLC meshes into the main game experience and makes every subsequent play-through more enjoyable (the same thing can be seen in Mass Effect, albeit there's only one DLC available so far). But new guns, or new teams, or whatever, that's pushing it when there's nothing to actually go along with that extra content.

Unfortunately, publishers control what goes, not gamers. This is the future, and it ****ing sucks.

 

That'll please the retailers. They are more reliant on used software sales than new sales, and then in one foul swoop, both new and used products evaporate.

 

Digital Distribution should be global, no exceptions. It's not as if people in India run widely different software than people in Canada. More or less, it's all PCs, it's all Windows.

 

That's one reason why I love RockBand. Bought the first game, loads of DLC, bought the second game, exported tracks from the first game, bought more DLC.

Look at GH. Buy GH3. Buy GH:A. Buy GH:WT, and DLC. Buy GH:M. Where's the compatibility between titles? If you're going to make me spend £40 or so on a game, and then expect me to spend the same again on DLC, don't then write the whole lot off because you fancy putting out a new game. Make the old content usable in the new title.

 

This is the PC version. How many shops sell used PC games?

 

Well, I got a 360 for sports games and thats it, so not using EA downloader. A shame 2, if sports games got the attention the did on console, i would sell my 360 in a heart beat. Hell, should have got a PS3 instead, as The Show is awesome, MLB 2k9, not so much, lol.

Will Ea actually make these sports games not use the PS2 engines, that was an embarassment for EA considering a lower end PC now can play consoles prots on highs ettings.

 

Hate the EA download system. Love Steam.

Looking forward to the day where I download every game purchase and keep my contact with spotty teenage shop assistants to the very minimum required

Not bothered about various game boxes clogging up my house, threw over a hundred away a few weeks ago.

 

EA Sports aren't worth the physical media they're on...

 

For now, but I think it's pretty clear that many publishers want to try and move to online distribution for as much of their stuff as possible.

 

Well... If "they" (not just EA) want more buyer, they need to make good games, not just poor console-ports...

They crying all the day because piracy, but they expect for us (in most case) to buy games just cause they say that. Normally if somebody are interested, 'he' donload a demo, play, then he made a decision about the game. "Buy it, or not?". Today, most of the games (even big titles) don't have Demo. If you want to try is, ypo need to buy it, or go to TPB and download it for free.

Well, the decision, that are you buy the game after you download it, is point of honor...

In short: Publishers want money for nothin', and crying because customers go to a torrent site instead of a Shop.

 

Publishers want money for something. The problem they have is convincing gamers to part with their cash. Debacles like the Oblivion Horse Armour don't help much, but I would hope most devs/publishers learnt from that and won't be repeating it.

 

Some time ago I've tried to purchase the Red Alert 3 expansion through EA's digital distribution System, it was so full of fail that I eventually gave up, first the payment site kept timing out, then I got errors related to the account (login?, you do not have a account, register? account already exists) and various other problems.

While Steam just works, the EA counterpart is the definition of it just can't work.

Also, has EA ever thought about the fact the size of a Game can easily exceed the download limits set by certain isps?