Electronic Arts just doesn’t want to leave monetization behind in Battlefront II…
Because of it, though, the company’s stocks’ value has dropped by 12% since October 31 from 119.6 to 105.55 dollars, which wiped out roughly three billion dollars (!) of value. Bleeding three billion bucks in a month away is rare, but the publisher had a good year until now (look at the second image).
Blake Jörgensen, Electronic Arts‘ chief financial officer, said the following at the Credit Suisse conference: „We’re not giving up on the notion of microtransactions. We’re learning and listening to the community regarding how best to roll that out in the future, and there’s more to come as we learn more. But I would say we’re certainly not changing our strategy. The great news is, this is one of the best games we’ve ever built. And we hear that from the players who are playing the game and engaging in the game. The retention day over day is better than we’ve seen in almost any of our games, the depth of the game is incredible, the size of the game unbelievable, and we’ll be adding in the next couple of weeks more content than we’ve ever added in a game before.”
He also talked about cosmetic microtransactions (think of Blizzard’s Overwatch): „If you did a bunch of cosmetic things, you might start to violate the canon. Darth Vader in white probably doesn’t make sense, versus in black. Not to mention you probably don’t want Darth Vader in pink. No offense to pink, but I don’t think that’s right in the canon.”
The problem is that the gamers have already found a flaw in that statement… as there’s a hidden character customization menu in Star Wars: Battlefront II. The video below shows the menus, and you can find more images here. Electronic Arts might be switching to Blizzard’s method of microtransactions, which could ease the tensions a bit.
Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech, VG247
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