EA Backpedals From Microtransactions In All Games Statement
Blake Jorgensen, CFO of Electronic Arts, has clarified a recent statement about EA’s intention to use microtransactions in all their games going forward as a misinterpretation, claiming he was only referring to EA’s future mobile titles.
At the 2013 Wedbush Transformational Technology Conference, Jorgensen elaborated, ”All of our mobile games will have microtransactions in them, because almost all of our mobile games are going to a world where its play-for-free.” However, their full-price console and PC games will still see some paid options, a la the Battlefield Premium service running in conjunction with Battlefield 3.
“They are premium services, or additional add-on products or downloads that we’re doing,” stated Blake. “It is essentially an extension of the gameplay that allows someone to take a game that they might have played for a thousand hours, and play it for two thousand hours. We want to ensure that consumers are getting value.”
Whether this clarification indicates a genuine differentiation between the two models, or is merely an attempt at damage control given the double-whammy of the initial micropayment announcement and the debacle surrounding the completely broken release of SimCity, is still up for debate. Considering that EA essentially asked for a whopping, up-front macro-payment for a piece of software that was completely unusable in SimCity’s case, scrutinizers gonna scrutinize.
You can read the reactions of several VGU.TV staffers, myself included, in one of our recent Roundtable discussions.
Source: Gamasutra
Christopher Erb
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