News Ex-EA exec: "EA is in the wrong business"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/01/14/ex-ea-exec-ea-is-in-the-wrong-business/1

 

sour grapes......... maybe? or as we all have expected for a long time, EA are poo

 

still maintain i will only run one digital distribution manager at one time (steam atm)

however i did like the way blizzard manages its digital downloads

 

"They literally couldn't imagine going to Wall Street with a message of increased profitability rather than top-line revenue growth."

This being the problem with most big businesses at the moment.

 

i dont like the idea of download only games becasue it means that when they stop supporting it when your hdd fails and it will you will lose the game and not be able to get it back yet with destroyable media aka dvd's you can at least keep them handy for this scenario and copy them to your pc and burn them to blank dvd's when your current one gets dameged

 

Broadband isnt as "unlimited" as we like to think anymore with unlimited now meaning maybe 40-80gb. Thats no where near enough if we are going to be buying new games digitally through sources such as steam. I for one would soon use up that amount of data if I had to download my games too!

Andy

 

I'd also hate losing media-based distribution in favour of a completely digital download distribution. It's just nice to have something you can actually hold in your hands (at least I think that. ). Also, digital download-only software MUST be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than that which is media-based.

 

not really the cost of dvd's to game makers is very low
and what the game developers sell them for is low its the console creators that make them more expensive and shops and online stores could easily double the price

 

Digital distribution actually works out better for me in this regard. I've lost count of the number of times I've lost or damaged game discs, loaned them to someone and not got them back, or lost the game manual with the license key and had to buy a new copy. No such problems with digital media, although admittedly I can't sell them on after I'm done with them any more.

Meh, I regularly use 120-160GB a month on my £10 20mbps unlimited connection and don't get throttled, and that's mostly heavy Steam usage.

 

I pray everyday that EA goes up in flames, just so they can get a taste of their own medicine.

DD is a must but you still need to have shelf copies to meet the non-internet consumer demand.

 

Has anyone here actually used the EA Store? As hateful pieces of software go, it's near the top for the fact that you can't redownload after a year. You buy, you download within one year, and that's it. After the one year, no reinstallation from the Store, and no reinstallation from your non-existant disc. You can pay a further $6 to extend that by five years apparently, if you feel like adding insult to injury.

That's the worst of both worlds. I wouldn't rely on the Store if I were EA, at least not until I'd checked out this tiny little 13-employee startup called 'Steam.'

 

I don't like the idea of just having Digital Distribution either. For the simple fact that some games take up a lot of disk space and can take a good while to actually download. I have a decent 8mbps Virign connection but it still took me 6 hours to install the Witcher and 7 hours to install Medieval II from Steam.

i also like having a physical copy of a game/CD/DVD etc. I'm a bit of a collector that way and it looks good having a big stack of boxes next to your pc/hi-fi/tv.

 

Whoever thought of the idea of Steam is a genius. In terms of what it does, its not groundbreaking but it works where other download places don't.

I just wonder how they make money off of all their sales though? Do they pay a license fee to the game publisher and then they sell as many copies of that game as they want or do they pay a fee to the publisher for every copy bought by customers?

 

EA should simply build a copy of STEAM... idenitcal (or with improvements) and release their entire catalogue onto the platform at amazing prices using the same processes that STEAM does.. like 4 like.

Dont feel ashamed to copy STEAM... but their current EA Store is not viable as a long term competitor.

Act now... or in 3 to 5yrs time be prepared to be bought out by VALVE.

 

The logical thing to do is pick up a stack of DVD-RWs for £nothing, and use Steam's backup-local-files utility (which compresses things nicely). Saves an absolute stack of time.

 

Unfortunately I have. I seem to remember buying a copy of BF2 or BF2142 on there a while back, and the download speeds were so awful and the software so annoying that I haven't dared go near it since.

It seems like EA have already given up on relying their own download service and released a lot of their most popular back catalogue titles on Steam. Even if they did release another one, no one would use it now that Steam has such a large share of the market unless their prices were ridiculously low.

 

hmm we'll lose things like collectors editions..

that guy sounds bitter

 

Ah yes, who could forget that particular cash cow

 

EA shouldn't copy steam, it should just use steam like it already does and provide some hard copy for those who don't use downloads. I don't get how this can be blamed for any failures - it's not like any of us have trouble buying EA games if we wanted one?

Basically EA will make money if they make good games and hence sell a lot. If the games aren't good enough they won't. It's not rocket science.

 

@DbD

EA wont want to release everything via STEAM as they will then be giving a cut to Valve. If their own distribution platform was a good as STEAM in every possible way then they would take the extra margin as income, rather than having to give it Valve instead.