"Beardedgeek;c-17662907" wrote:
Well the answer to your first question is money.
The less product they can sell for the highest price the better from a corporate standpoint.
I understand how the business works, however, from a gamer standpoint - you know, the consumers that provide the money for the business to even exist in the first place - the version that only exists because it is now riding on the reputation of the previous versions - it is bad in the long run for EA, as it just solidifies their long running reputation of taking once great games and turning them into shells of what they were or completely destroying them.
They have a long standing history of this and apparently they are too big to fail - but, as a consumer myself, I have tons of games on Steam and only the Sims 4 and several others on Origin - strictly for the fact that it is EA.
They lose somewhere somehow.
Their reputation is important to gamers - regardless if the "corporate" side of it agrees - in the long run. Two random articles to say this isn't just opinion but a long standing history with EA:
https://screenrant.com/video-game-franchises-ea-ruined/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141205/05574329334/ea-admits-that-gobbling-up-talented-studios-then-ruining-them-isnt-working-out-so-well.shtml
EA Admits That Gobbling Up Talented Studios Then Ruining Them Isn't Working Out So Well
Failures
from the now-witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station dept
Thu, Dec 11th 2014 9:27am — Karl Bode
EA, a company right up there with Comcast in terms of consumer disdain, has a long and proud history of gobbling up talented developers, then either obliterating them outright, or homogenizing them until the products are the very pinnacle of bland. Studios like Bullfrog, Westwood Studios, and Origin were all near legendary game developers when acquired, but are now little more than fond memories after ham-fisted attempts to cash in on the catalogs (Ultima IX, anyone?). Other studios like Maxis were similarly legendary, but now struggle to put out rushed, highly-flawed simulacrum under the EA banner.
After twenty years of such stumbling, scorched-earth acquisitions, EA's bloated belly appears to be full, and the company has finally decided that perhaps it should focus on developing content with the acquired talent army it already has. Company CFO Blake Jorgensen would even go so far as to admit EA's history with such acquisitions is "marginal" at best:
"I think our history with acquisitions is somewhat marginal in performance," Jorgensen said when asked if EA has identified any acquisition targets in the industry. "We have some that are spectacular, and some that didn't do so well. It's a headcount business, right? You're buying headcount, and that's always difficult to manage in acquisitions. It doesn't mean we won't do them, but I think where we've been most successful is in smaller acquisitions that we've integrated very quickly."
In other words, EA finally has all the talent it needs to keep rolling out barely-interesting Madden after Madden updates (shielded from competition via their exclusive NFL arrangement) and a decade of new, semi-interesting Star Wars games courtesy of its deal with Disney. If EA's stock is any indication, investors think EA has learned a thing or two about making friends with consumers, and the company claims it's working hard to change its customer reputation in the market (EA gave away several free games as a promotional effort over the weekend). Though dysfunction may just be grafted to EA's genetic code, 2015 might be the year that Ubisoft steals EA's consumer annoyance crown.
