The company already has a deadline set up, too.

Electronic Arts‘ chief financial officer, Blake Jörgensen talked at the UBS Global Conference, where he said that EA is collaborating with an unnamed partner on a streaming service, which should be starting by 2020. Interestingly, Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, also set the same year as the deadline for the Xbox streaming service. Jörgensen thinks the reason why these services aren’t more widespread yet is that there’s a lack of data centers. If you’re far from one and you use a streaming service (for example, PlayStation Now), you might find the quality terrible, even if your internet connection is more than fast enough to handle it. Jörgensen also brought up the internet speeds in some parts of the world.

He also commented about the Star Wars: Battlefront II scandal. As the publisher considers this game as a live service, they can regularly change it from day to day, and now, EA’s goal is to keep the players engaged. He said that we should be patient until Electronic Arts finds the acceptable values for things like the heroes to get unlocked. (He also said that they made a big mistake with Battlefield 4: they didn’t use the games-as-a-service method with it, even though this title was regularly in the company’s top ten list.) In short, he doesn’t care about the negative opinions about EA whatsoever…

Yesterday, we also wrote that the game’s refund disappeared from Origin – however, according to VG247, that is not the case. It’s available on the order history page if the money for the pre-ordered game was deducted recently (as they do it a few days before the title becomes available). Returning the game is possible via the Great Game Guarantee and the refund pages. (Now that we’re at Origin, a quick detour: the current free game in the On the House program is Planets vs. Zombies: Game of the Year Edition…)

Until then, Blizzard is poking at Electronic Arts: StarCraft II switched to a free-to-play model. Up to level five, all commanders are free, but Kerrigan, Raynor, and Artanis are entirely free – if you already own the game, you can pick up Heart of the Swarm until December 8! Blizzard made fun of EA in two tweets, saying that there’s no pay-to-win mechanism, plus zero hours are required to unlock the campaign.

Source: GameSpot, GameSpot, VG247, Twitter, Twitter