Millions of people live in the UK, you think they’re more into digital distribution than the rest of europe or the US?
Just wait until net neutrality is overturned and we have to pay extra to download games and movies.
I hope this makes Disney rethink their Star Wars license with EA and they switch to another big developer or start looking for one. I can imagine the meme eruption when that happens.
Look at what EA did here. They turned the thread on QT3 and everywhere else about the P2W instead of the game. And then people really delve into the game and go “ehhh, it’s not that good anyway.” EA fucked up BIGTIME.
Combine this mess with the recent cancellation of a game long in development that kicked Amy Hennig to the curb along with a whole studio and it’s been one black eye after another for videogames with Star Wars in them and Electronic Arts. Regardless of the quality or problelms that game had, it’s just another reason that maybe Disney shouldn’t have put their eggs in the EA basket?
Destiny 2 had 50% lower physical launch sales than Destiny, but higher digital sales. (We don’t know how much higher).
Obviously the Battlefront II drop was bigger than that, and over just two years rather than three. So it’s probably not good news for that game. But in general the “physical sales down by xx%” headlines don’t tell that much right now.
Is that right? Wow, physical sales fell really fast. Thanks for adding some perspective.
Well, Lucasarts didn’t do much better for a while. Maybe Star Wars is just cursed.
I’m disappointed that this was such a mess, btw. I really enjoyed the beta and especially the space flight. I thought it was a better game all around than the first one when it comes to the actual playing it part.
“Well…our customers have spoken. They don’t care much about single player really and don’t approve of our moving alway from the season pass model.”
I am sure I said it upthread, I’ll say it again. I’d take the season pass in a heartbeat over the utter shit progression system / lootbox combo they have going on now.
I think a $60 game with a $20 “Season Pass” is right in the sweet spot of pricing. You start getting over that and it starts feeling like it should either be a full blown expansion pack or a new game. You’d think Electronic Arts of all companies would be onto the idea of yearly $60 updates by now.
I think that it is important to note that even with anecdotal evidence that Wumpus is bad at the game, meaning it is not pay 2 win does not matter.
This is just like corporate ethics training, even the appearance that something is unethical should be questioned, because it can effect the company and sales.
In this case, even if the pay2win parts are overblown the mere possibility that the game could be unfair has tainted the release. Even if they completely re-balance the game, they are going to pay for this in sales. They royally fucked this up.
Consumers are fickle. Look at Chipotle. Just a few instances of bad hygiene, or a supplier of an ingredient, and BAM 20% drop in earnings. Hundreds of stores across the country, and issues in 5-10 locations did major damage to the brand.
Games are meant to be fair and balanced for all players, otherwise why play? (unless this is a mobile game that is pay2win, but those are free to start)
Its the 5th largest game market in the world.
Keep dreaming, pal. If you think a game with Jedi and soldiers on the same battlefield is “fair”, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. This game is intensely asymmetric.
Also @JonRowe have you even played this game? If you haven’t, then I politely invite you to drink a big steaming hot cup of shut the fuck up. Please feel free to clarify if I am wrong, and you have in fact played the game for more than, let’s say, 2 hours?
I heard they also cancelled the mobile Star Wars game that was being made at Firemonkeys.
Maybe no better time for Disney to bail and tear up a contract then?
I see it starting to hit the major newspapers as well
I’d like to see some hybrid. As much as I could potentially like a season pass or a series of paid updates, in action, they always dilute their own value by fracturing the player base. Over time, no matter how cool I saw the content of the expansion packs, Battlefield taught me that buying them was just a way to repeat a few maps over and over (and over) or never play them at all.
There could be real value in merging the paid content with the general player pool such as the mp shooter version of Total Warhammer 2 or MOBA character releases. The closest we have is Overwatch, but all publishers seem to see there are loot boxes and dollar signs. Plus EA waaaaayyyy overreached with free versus paid gain rates, and then directly tied them to any sense of accomplishment/ progression (never mind the P2W / paid advantage element).
Should games cost $100 now? I really don’t know. But they sure as heck shouldn’t cost $2000 (or years of in game play time) for the equivalent of a $50 purchase a decade plus ago. Even if Battlefront 2 existed as a pure FtP with the loot boxes, it would have been a train wreck. The greed was off the charts and deeply imbedded in the core game design.
Late to the party review from GB:
On paper, this should have been a safe bet for both Electronic Arts and Star Wars fans. EA was bound to sell plenty of copies based purely off of the popularity of the license, and they should have been able to satisfy fans by adding the elements that the last Battlefront lacked. While they did add those elements, the additions were either severely underwhelming or fundamentally broken. The end result feels like a game that was created in a boardroom, its DNA formed by focus testing and market research. Time will tell what EA does in an attempt to remedy its grave errors with Battlefront II, but the game as it stands today is little more than a disappointing mess. Its technical prowess, beloved characters, and shiny spacecraft serve as little more than a distracting facade that covers an embarrassing attempt at a marquee Star Wars game.
And checking metacritic, the overall score seems to show it is gonna drop below 70 soon.
On opencritic it stands at 69 now. With a FAIR rating.
This is hard. One the one hand, I love Star Wars. There is nothing else like Star Wars in fiction now, though I wish there were. It literally has no competitors. I was looking forward to playing the new game.
On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious DICE built a technically cool game and EA or . . . someone . . interjected this obvious cash grab through a Skinner Box. They almost got away with it too. But they didn’t.
And even though I love Star Wars . . . the schadenfreude beats the Force on this one. The Force is strong, but the Schadenfreude wins.
Between season passes, extra skins and CPT packs I’ve easily spent over $125 above the cost of the base game for SF5 since it’s release (and that game kinda sucked by many metrics). This is fine with me since it’s all just playing dress up dolls and I do it voluntarily. If there were in-game buffs that you could buy in some way I would have never spent dime one, much less over $100 in dlc. EA really crossed the line here.
I don’t mind developers and publishers trying to commoditize as much as they can from a title, after all they are businesses and costs to develop have skyrocketed. Of course they want to see a return on that investment.
That said, allowing people to gain a competitive advantage in a multiplayer game through continued purchases is off limits as far as I’m concerned (even if that advantage is slight). Publishers need to find a different way (Overwatch says hi).
Honestly I’m glad BF2 is doing poorly in sales since it sends a pretty clear message as to what gamers find acceptable, especially when you contrast it to the success of Overwatch.
I generally hate to see any game fail, regardless of my personal tastes, but I think there is a pretty clear message in this one.