GamesIndustry.biz - Article Roundup

I found a few new articles on GamesIndustry.biz that interest to some of you. So lets get started as the first one is a new interview with EA about the publisher getting better.

By his own admission, Andrew Wilson still “geeks out” at EA's press conferences, despite his position as the company's CEO demanding that he take centre stage. When we meet after the Gamescom media briefing, he enthuses in great detail and at considerable length about a FIFA 15 video demonstrating the capabilities of the new game's goalkeepers. What that team has accomplished since he ascended to executive level, Wilson says, never fails to make him smile.

And Wilson has spent his first year in charge identifying the ways to spread that enthusiasm to EA's customers. That hasn't always resulted in success, of course: with Battlefield 4 the company stumbled once again on the unpredictable landscape of online gaming, and with EA Access it met with resistance from Sony on the grounds of value. In this interview, Wilson discusses both of these issues, and outlines EA's renewed dedication to listening to its customers and following wherever that might lead.

The second article is about all of us being worthless as customers, or to put it simply we buy games cheaply so were not worth the effort from developers.

"Where once you were worth $20, and then you might have become a fan and bought another 4 games off of us for $20, you were worth $100," Prince said. "We only had to fix your computer for you once, as well, so the next four games amortised the cost of the initial support… Now you're worth $1 to us. If you buy every one of our games, you're worth $5. After Valve and the tax man and the bank take their cuts, you're not even worth half a cup of coffee."

More information.

If they do a good enough job on initial release, then they won't need to spend much on support and word of mouth leads to more customers. If they don't, well then they're worthless to us. :-P