Star Wars: Battlefront II: Electronic Arts Believes In Microtransactions

General news News 01/31/2018

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Weaker sales than planned? Let’s turn microtransactions on again!

Electronic Arts confirmed to Wall Street Journal that they shipped nine million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront II so far. It’s one million lower than the predictions (and way below the first game’s 15 million first-quarter sales), due to the controversy it caused with the loot boxes in November, causing the microtransactions to be turned off. The game’s „failure” resulted in a 186 million dollar net loss – EA plans to sell 1-3 million copies of the game until the end of March. How to make up the lost ground? Not with the way you’d think (friendlier pricing, more free content) – instead, by turning back the microtransactions on! It was confirmed by Blake Jörgensen, Electronic Arts’ chief financial officer!

„Going forward, we believe that live services that include optional digital monetization, when done right, provides a very important element of choice that can extend and enhance the experience in our games,” EA said. „We’re committed to continually working with our players to deliver the right experience in each of our games and live services.” Live services, such as FIFA’s Ultimate Team – and watch how it makes a ton of money for the publisher. The microtransactions in Star Wars: Battlefront II will be turned back on „in the next few months.” (In other words: they waited until we shut up about the loot boxes to continue what they started…)

One question remains: what does Disney think of the situation? Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts‘ CEO, says that „we shouldn’t believe everything that we read in the press.” (Fair enough, then we shouldn’t believe what they say!) He thinks that there’s a tremendous relationship with Disney, adding that they „have been very proactive in that relationship in service of the players.” If EA finds the right model to monetize, Wilson believes that Disney will support them.

So they took roughly two months to crawl right back to the monetization of Star Wars: Battlefront II. We are not surprised.

Source: WCCFTech, GameSpot, DualShockers

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)