Battlefront II - EA and DICE versus the Dark Side

Victory?

Cool, now keep that system for the next one and throw in Galactic Conquest with bots. I’ll buy the heck out of BF3! It’s too late for this one, Luke. You do not understand the power of the dark side.

Is it down to $15 yet?

Nice there’re doing this but I’ll just say after playing around a dozen hours of MP IMO I just never felt like it’s been “pay to win”. Had fun playing the different modes and don’t feel like I’m being screwed with.

You may have missed it as the gaming and mass media didn’t really pick it up, but there was a bit of controversy upon initial release and the pay2win stuff was removed shortly thereafter.

Their plan for moving forward actually sounds pretty good. The game should’ve launched with this scheme instead of the half-assed bullshit they rolled out.

Yes, I find it heartening how the market soundly rejected random lootboxes and (more importantly, IMO) pay2win in a full-price $60 game. I would have bet against it.

Right. $60 has been full price for a long time now though. Easy to imagine $70 being the new normal when the loot box backlash has done its work.

That would be fine by me. Games cost $60 twenty years ago. Prices should increase with inflation.

If I play Battlefront 2 on my new Star Wars PS4 Pro, do I get any special advantages?? Extra ammo? Quick charging grenades? Come on, EA!

Agreed. I don’t feel like gamers are too understanding of this. You can only grow the market so much, after that you really need to find a way to raise more money because these games are ridiculously expensive compared to what they were even 10 years ago.

Having sensible microtransactions like cosmetics and some convenience items are fine by me, as is having a longer tail in terms of support with content and DLC (GalCiv3, Offworld Trade Company, Paradox titles). I’d much rather have that than having to pay $100 up front for a new game which might be a complete turd.

EA really crossed the line into pay2win territory and I’m glad they got burned. Hopefully they have found a happier middle ground.

I’m fine with alternate monetization like DLC and cosmetics, but pay2win in a full-price game is flat-out unacceptable. And surprisingly, the market agrees with me.

Subject matter and genre are important as well. EA makes mad bank on Ultimate Team and their mobile games and those are as pay-to-win as any games can be. There’s some low-level griping about it, but the general audience accepts it.

Mobile games are typically free, and pay2win is generally accepted there. Not by me, but by the market. Was not aware their soccer games were pay2win, that sucks.

The Ultimate Team stuff (FIFA, Madden, NBA Live) is crazy p2w. They’re pretty much CCGs embedded in the sports games.

Not necessarily. These days, the marginal cost of production is basically zero, even for physical, compared to the sale price anyway. Distribution will add a little more. So in principle it’s perfectly viable to improve margins by simply selling more units, rather than selling at a higher price. That’s basically the business model that EA and Activision have been pursuing until now - sell a handful of games that sell a bajillion copies. They may have reached the limits of it, though, which is why they’re pursuing other revenue streams and games as a service type stuff.

They’re literally that. But, bear in mind, you can still play non-Ultimate Team MP.

Not $15, but I have seen it as low as $23.99 I think. It can typically be found for about $30 these days.

Which is why I think they’ve gotten a pass, but there are plenty of parents that have learned a hard lesson about which mode their kids prefer.

All true, but that leads to all sorts of exploitative and anti-consumer behavior. Would be far better to charge $100 for the base game and then $50 for 1-2 large expansion packs on successful well-reviewed titles than nickel-and-dime your customers.

Obviously that’s just the release price; if you wait a couple months you pay half that at most.