"In his first year as CEO, Wilson initiated a "player-first" corporate strategy, and offered more free-to-play games and in-app purchase options.[7] In a move towards a transformation from physical software to digital, he also greatly increased EA's digital offerings, and launched EA Access, a subscription-based digital service for Xbox One players that allows unlimited play across a selection of EA titles.[7][8] Electronic Arts had a large revenue increase and its stock price doubled in 2014.[7][9]" -wiki
In today's earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says he has been playing the next Battlefield game with the development team and it will be a "tremendous live service."
"a tremendous live service" said Wilson, "...but a fairly terrible gaming experience." 😁
Honestly, I think he may be right with his statement in so much as he was using Webster's second definition for tremendous.
I'm noticing the language used over and over now is "live service" instead of "game". I'm coming around to the idea that what they're trying to do is replace the fact that a game used to be a "good" with it being a "service". That accursed farms video from 5 years ago titled "games as a service is fraud" was spot on. Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
So, broken and buggy game with battle-pass and a perfectly functioning store from day one? Of course, a promise to fix the game with a roadmap within a week of launch. Yeah, a tremendous live service indeed.
Let's go boys! Time to drop trou, get out your wallet, and pre-order the super platinum edition with a hilarious camo, useless rifle, and the day-1 DLC included.
Likewise. Helldivers 2 has proven there’s some life left in the otherwise moribund live service category, by doing something different and most importantly fun.
Somehow I think battlefield will fail to learn anything from Helldivers success and end up churning out another over monitzed, rather dull, addition to the category.
Battlefield has probably been in development for 4 years now and their C-Suite doesn't know shit about dick. That ship turns like the titanic - It's going down.
Yes in that there is a new battlepass every month with new guns and armor to unlock.
No in that you can earn the battlepass with in game currency and never have to give them more than the $40 that the game cost to have a ton of fun.
Beyond that - They've taken live service games to a better place. There's an ongoing galactic campaign and the individual missions you run contribute to galactic objectives which have real consequences in game. They have a dedicated "Game Master" like a DND Dungeon Master who decides when to release new units, what happens when we succeed and how to punish failure.
Because most people aren't in places like this. Most people don't care about what the companies do, if they even know. I work next to a guy who buys the new call of duty every time, hates it, and buys the next anyway. Because it's call of duty. He doesn't care about mergers, or shutdowns, or what an Activision is.
He plays his games and that's it. Folks like us, who are concerned with how the sausage gets made, we're not big enough to make a difference.
It will be said to influence the decision of people who are new to the gaming scene and haven't been repeatedly burned. Not everyone is a doom scroller like us.