'We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way,' says CFO
EA will be integrating microtransactions into all of its games in future, the publisher's CFO has revealed.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, Blake Jorgensen said the publisher was interested in adding further ways to monetise its games.
"The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games," said Jorgensen.
"We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."
A strong, secure backend is certainly important to handle the millions of payments needed to make console games with microtransactions profitable, and Jorgensen thinks his company has this taken care of.
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"If you're doing microtransactions and you're processing credit cards for every one of those microtransactions you'll get eaten alive," he said.
"And so Rajat's team has built an amazing backend to manage that and manage that much more profitably. We've outsourced a lot of that stuff historically; we're bringing that all in-house now."
Microtransactions serve no nothing purpose for gamers. I hope not every triple A game comes with these.
"[...] and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."
Come on, EA! Most of the mature gaming population hates you for your business model already. The only people who "enjoy" microtransactions are tablet and mobile gamers that don't know better!
Stop fucking up the gaming industry! And fire Frank Gibeau already!
Microtransactions within paid-for games are terrible. Nothing puts me off buying a game more than thinking that I'll only be purchasing part of the game.
So we will be paying the full ticket price for a game that we will then have to pay more to unlock all its features?
The fall and death of EA. Good riddance.
All future EA games will be pay 2 win
"And so Rajat's team has built an amazing back end to manage that and manage that much more profitably".
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Too optimistic, I guarantee that all the resources put in to building this system will be wasted.
The real "success stories" with m.t. are those cheap iPhone/Android games with in game purchases and the majority of the purchaser are kids under the age of 13 making $100 purchases at the expense of their hard working parents.
oh well. EA always have been this evil, no suprise
"EA will be integrating microtransactions into all of its games in future" -
Goodbye, EA, you never see me again!
What you guys fail to realize is, with every year people expect more and more from games. Especially with new consoles coming out, the devs have to step up the game right?
That means, higher development costs, bigger teams and more money needed to create a game, BUT same shelf price! And people expect the game to be cheap, otherwise the devs are 'robbing us' so to speak.
So how do you expect developers to make a profit and keep being succesful, release quality games and pay good salaries to their employees?
I told everyone it would eventually come to this. And you can bet your ass they won't be the only company to do it, either. Like DLC, it'll catch on and run away before we can raise our voice in protest.
The reason this happens is because those of us who give a crap are in reality a tiny minority and the rest of the market doesn't care one iota about whether this happens. They'll just happily buy into it like everything else.
Repeat after me: Core gamers are a minority, and we are screwed. Core gamers are a minority, and we are screwed.
We better get used to it, there's more where this came from.
I haven't played an EA game in years. The last one being Mass Effect 1 and 2....which 2 left a lot to be desired so I never made it a priority to purchase 3. Liked Dead Space 1(thought the series had huge potential)then EA's greed turned the franchise into a flaccid mockery of the original's design. Other than that I once got cheated out of a 50% coupon for the debacle that would be -Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning we won't see that MMO-(did not purchase afterwards because of the horrid customer service and lies originating in Origin(their Steam doppelganger)). Needless to say I don't play EA games and haven't had a hard time avoiding them.
But alas ye console gamers there will always be an EA because of you and your buying trends. Not harping on you, I can't judge your tastes, but you're feeding their vampirism.
@Sick of Whiney Neckbeards
you spoken as if they are obligated to make more games to make us pay. when company like EA make shitty games, we the consumer inform them reality by not buying, not by paying them to make more shitty games.
All games will have micro-transactions eventually you can blame Turbine for it D&D online & LOTRO both went F2P with micro-transactions & saw massive jumps in player numbers as well as revenue. There were MMOs with micro-transactions before them but there was always a question of which model was best. It's been made clear by them that F2P with Micro-Transactions is the superior model.
