That was supposed to be a play on the EA Sports BIG label. Pretty dumb, really.
But the market is opening in an hour and a half, after EA have pretty much made it clear that SWTOR probably wasn't worth the biggest production budget in the company's history.
EA has been in crisis for almost a full year now. Something's gotta give.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-21-stock-ticker-why-eas-market-valuation-has-crashed/
How low can they go?
They forced Origin on its player base - cant get much lower than that! But I think JR will have to fall on his sword if they cant get out of this.
I think the telling sign will be early next year if F2P SWTOR has indeed made money and grown its user base. LOLOL
This EA hate is getting old. Find something new to hate, which actually deserves it.
@Giskard
Can't tell if serious...
Generally hatred involves a lot of anger, offensive imagery or nasty insults.
Simply stating that EA is in a crisis, which they quite obviously are, doesn't really fit the bill.
I don't see much reason to be happy about it.
I may not like their business practices and general lack of ethics, but I do like their games, and I do like games from lots of other publishers, which are almost certainly going to be affected by this.
EA are one of the major cogs holding the industry together, for better or worse. Having EA freefall down the market ladder isn't good for anyone.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens on the market 5 minutes from now.
Looks like people like the notion of SWTOR as a F2P title. Almost 5% up :)
I like EA and I hope they can bounce back. They publish some of my favourite games and I probably spend the most time playing an EA title.
TOR was a really big miss-hit for them. I still like playing the game and will probably continue my sub until otherwise but that won't stop me from criticising some of their decisions. I mean, I was one of the people that didn't originally re-sub at the end of the first free month and I have only recently got back into it after the later patches.
Having recently played some KOTOR, I still don't know why they didn't just make an outstanding KOTOR 3, instead of pumping millions into a MMO format that has been tried, tested and failed in almost every instance since WoW.
"Having recently played some KOTOR, I still don't know why they didn't just make an outstanding KOTOR 3, instead of pumping millions into a MMO format that has been tried, tested and failed in almost every instance since WoW."
Lucas Arts is the reason. They wanted to make a MMO that was more successful than the previous star wars MMO. When Lucas arts flopped and was on the brink of closing they sold all the development and rights to EA who had just bought up Bioware. EA was just putting too many eggs in one basket hopefully the game can bounce back like various other games that went from P2P to F2P like DCUO, DDO and LOTRO. We will see. I am still occasionally playing when I can which is once a week in PVP with my imperial agent and I plan on still paying the Sub.
@Grim
Valve did the same with steam back in the day. And people hated them for it, i dare say they hated them more than people hate EA right now. Just give it time.
EA certainly hopes you're right about that Talkar, but I think there's a number of reasons why it's going to be a lot harder for EA.
For one they're a classic US megacorp. Which means they don't see themselves as a service, they see themselves as a revenue stream. Of course, smarter business people would see the two as one and the same, but EA believes that less effort for more profit is "efficient".
I think that's also exemplified in DeMartinis speech about sales. They aren't a service, they're "inefficient".
Steam on the other hand, has delivered stuff like the Source Movie Maker, and Alien Swarm, neither of which are monetized, which is really just an expense costing them bandwidth. However, it's the kind of thing, which along with extensive post-release support, earns them good faith with their customers, and that's money in the bank.
Secondly, the team they have running Origin obviously aren't very proficient when it comes to design. They've had the better part of a decade to check Steam out, and they couldn't even deliver the same standard.
Lastly, I think they're going to have a harder time catching up, because EAs only interface with their users is through focus groups or similarly impersonal feedback. It might leave you with a lot of metrics and statistics, but it won't leave you with an understanding of your base, and that's what you need to get ahead of them.
Which is ultimately why I see these kinds of companies as bad business, beyond any consideration of "Good" or "Evil". The businessman who takes a hands on approach (no matter how expensive his suit is) and bothers to know where his customers are at, is going to be far better at reaching them 9 times out of 10.
I think one of the simplest things over looked when thinking about long term Origins sucess is compared to Steams, is that when Steam started they didn't have a unified competeter.
Steam is entrenched and leads the market. They are a giant, with legions of fans. They offfer a great service with great prices. EA, comes across as just wanting your money.
If Valve had to fight an already established service then(when they launched Steam) as EA is facing now ... they prolly wouldn't have made it.
I don't think that's ever the case OG. I know you're a very easy going guy, but if everybody looked at market leaders and went "Well, we can't beat them", then obviously no one ever would.
If Samsung looked at Apple and went "We're fucked", they wouldn't be leading the market on smartphones right now. If Google looked at Microsoft and Mozilla and went "We're fucked", then I wouldn't be using Chrome right now.
There's always a shot for those who want to take it.
I do love being on Steam, but if there was a service like Steam, that offered the same kind of value and convenience, I'd be on it.
I enjoy using GamersGate, GOG, and I think Desura has potential. If they launched a client that could compete, I'd be willing to sacrifice having the lion's share of my collection on one client.
The reason why I'm not enjoying Impulse and Origin is because they're ass backwards in comparison.
Steam also has lots of vulnerabilities.
- You could offer live chat support with American supporters
- You could offer better offline capability
- You could offer a "savebox" for all saves, that syncs with your account, possibly with monetized extension options
- You could offer an appstore
- You could offer improved security features
- You could offer a better organized, more integrated community
There's really lots of room for innovation, and considering the amount of money you could be making by going there, I'm a little surprised that so few are actually trying.
I think Voice chat would be a great option. I would love that across all of my games in Steam ala LIVE.
I don't think a new, better service is impossible. But I doubt EA can do that with Origins.
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