You'll be seeing more micro-transactions in EA's games in the future.
At the cusp of the next console generation, major publishers have proven to be a little more open-minded about financial models that deviate from the traditional retail model, or, rather, they're adopting alternative financial models out of necessity. Free-to-play has taken over the MMO market, and appears to be encroaching on the rest of the industry. Recently, Crysis developer Crytek announced its decision to adapt to produce purely free-to-play games within the next five years.
EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, announced the publisher's intentions to include micro-transactions in all future titles, despite coming under fire for its controversial addition of micro-transactions in Dead Space 3 that allowed paying users to buy upgrades much more quickly than non-paying users (paying meaning users that spent money on the game in addition to the game's retail price.)
"We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be," said Jorgensen. "Consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."
But are they? While EA's micro-transaction model in Dead Space 3 wasn't one that excluded non-paying players from accessing all upgrades, it certainly requires more grinding out of a player that doesn't decide to pay into micro-transactions. It's a fine line that EA is toeing towards pay-to-win. One that's sure to displease more than a few paying customers.
The tighter your grip the more gamers will slip throught your fingers!
Althought I expected this from you.
I'm tired of reading from people defending game publishers and developers citing that they are 'in the business of making money.' They are in the business of making games for the enjoyment of consumers. Their hope is that they make money from this. Gamers are becoming more unhappy with the the results of such companies because they are producing games with making money in mind, not the enjoyment of the consumer.
If they stopped trying to stuff features into a game that are so clearly designed towards jumping their profits up and compromising the design of the game then they would a produce a better quality game with the time they saved and most likely end up making more money from satisfied players anyways as players flock to such a rare title.
I really hate this new trend where you pay more for a game either up front premium package or later in microtransactions to have an advantage. To me it just defeats the purpose of it being a fun thing one does after a hard day at work.
You just used a 'solely for' argument to describe my post just like the one I was responding to. I wasn't saying that. As I stated, I believe such companies are beginning to prioritize money-making features over the quality of their games and satisfaction of the customer. To the detriment of their bottom line. See the portion of my post where I suggest they could possibly be making more money focusing on the quality of the game and satisfaction of the player? Yeah. I didn't describe anything remotely like how game developers should becomes NPO's or there being anything 'inherently wrong' with making money. Your post is atypical to what I was describing originally.
The tighter your grip the more gamers will slip throught your fingers!