EA CEO John Riccitiello talks about the shift of EA's business model towards microtransactions, Free to Play,SWTOR and more. ~RantGaming.com
Today Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson provided a look into his ideas for the use of generative AI in the company's development processes.
EA is still a shady shitty company even with or without the help of Skynet. All they will use AI for is new ways to milk loot boxes and come up with the same sports title with a different year on the label. They are one company I truly do hate with a passion. They single handedly ruined some great franchise with their death touch. ME, Dead Space, Alice Returns, Dante's Inferno.
EA layoffs followed by 'Generative AI to Drive Monetization'
I knew it. Wonder what AI salary looks like? Nothing.
And take away creativity, and people's jobs as we've been seeing. Got it.
No thanks. I want my games created by people, not AI.
EA doesn't want to lose their title of worst gaming company ever, always trying their best to remain the champs!
What's sad is that they have so much potential to be a decent publisher.
SSX Tricky / SSX 3
Def Jam Vendetta / Fight for New York
NBA Street
NFL Steet
Mirror's Edge
Bad Company
Burnout 3 / 4 / 5
Remember when EA used to be awesome? It's all over with now. Unpolished, if not out-right broken games these days. Endless monetization and gambling in their sports games, and let's not forget wasting hours of your life trying to unlock characters or equipment using "surprise boxes!"
Gareth, Justin, and JoeyZ look at Layoff news for EA and Sony and reasons behind the downturn in the industry and more.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson writes: "In this time of change, we expect these decisions to impact approximately 5 percent of our workforce. I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company. While not every team will be impacted, this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams. Our primary goal is to provide team members with opportunities to find new roles and paths to transition onto other projects. Where that’s not possible, we will support and work with each colleague with the utmost attention, care, and respect. Communicating these impacts has already begun and will be largely completed by early next quarter."
All the big ones doing the same stuff. Terrible. I just hope that all these people are able to get a new job as soon as possible, God know that it is horrible to be left jobless when you have your kids or your parents depending on your financial help
The point I feel is problematic about all of this is that focusing on Owned Ip means more sequels, remasters and more of what was selling last year.
Since Guild Wars 2 is the biggest MMO to come and it's F2P, many MMOs will loose players. They should consider going F2P or lower their monthly-fee. The same applies to other games.
I opened up a Steam account for my son the other day, so he could play some of these free to play games. Two hours later he asked me if he could have £2.50 to buy some extras on there.
I told him he couldn't, he had a strop about it. And then I pushed him out of his window. I didn't really, but it just showed me how easy it is for people to quickly run up a bill for these games. It's free to play, as long as you're are willing to have the very basic parts of the game.
No wonder everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, Free to play is anything but free to play.
While I am apprehensive about the industry's shift toward micro-transactions and F2P (in particular will gaming turn play to win), I also cannot help but be optimistic about this approach. Reason being is that there is so much potential in the idea and ideal that giving gamers more power as consumers can ultimately help improve gaming and the industry as a whole.
In an ideal world--the sort where magical pega-corns gallop across the skies and puke rainbows--if we are allowed the freedom to constantly vote with our wallets, this could encourage developers to want to offer quality improvements and constant (as opposed to every year or two) updates to an an already enjoyable base game. The more content and the better content, the more potential they have to make money after all, and on an ongoing basis rather than as one lump sum.
The latest example of successful F2P that comes to mind is Sega's PSO2 which launched in Japan early July 2012. It offers a pretty packed base game for free with a cash shop aimed towards convenience rather than necessity (which was a problem in older F2P games like Silk Road Online or Perfect World--some folks were spending hundreds, even 500 bucks a month). If this is the direction things are going, then it's a win-win in my eyes at least.
As for older games, F2P or lower subs with cash shop would be a way to revitalize them, and I believe in AOC's case, it did just that. There are plenty of folks who might want to try a game like FFXI but not necessarily want to pay the full sub price for a game released 10 years ago. On the other hand, they might be more inclined to give it a go if there wasn't a sub fee, then pay to unlock the game features they desired.
TL;dr: Aliens.
Bioware + EA's financial backing + Star Wars license + MMO and it's not even been out 8 months and it's already going free to play. This combination should have been a huge success but once again EA have found a way to take a perfectly good studio (Bullfrog, Maxis, Westood, Mythic all say "HEEEEEYYYY") and drag it under.
EA should change their motto to "EA Games - Ruin everything"