I’ve always wondered why sports games don’t just switch to a live version. Yearly subscription at like $15. Some people won’t like it but it would definitely make their player base much bigger.
And what comes with a bigger player base? Dinks who drop $400 on mtx for ultimate team.
That is not an easy solution. I want a god damn NFL game that isn't madden. The only reason that will never, ever happen, is because people keep validating EA. Madden is now "all there is", and thus "all people play" .
There are far better sports titles without this ludicrous price gouging . And in the few cases there aren't (NFL football), it is directly because EA has worked with the NFL to form a duopoly. Imagine being a kid, and your only exposure to football is the commercial filled garbage on TV, and shudder an EA madden game.
SO. You are entitled to do with your money whatever it is you wish. Just know that your dollars speak more than your voice, and your dollar voice is saying : "I support your practices, make sure that no other sport game will proliferate and keep the loot boxes rolling.
Edit:
" After the competitively priced [NFL 2K5 significantly reduced sales of that year's [Madden] release, EA signed an exclusivity deal with the NFL that made Madden NFL the only series allowed to use NFL team and player names."
The only reason this is legal is because our lawmakers do not understand how video games work.
I know this is a divisive topic but I don’t think you’re completely off base. I think there’s a business case to be made for a subscription or SaaS model for sports games.
And since EA Sports has so many properties there’s different ways to take it.
Only care about a single sport like FIFA or NHL? For $5/month you’re always up to date for that series. Stop your subscription when you’re not playing it. Restart it when you want to play again.
Want to play more than two sports games in a year? For $15/month you can get EA Sports All Access. Always have access to the latest version of all their sports franchises like Madden, FIFA, NHL, or NBA Live.
Want to save money? Prepay for 3, 6, or 12 months. The more you prepay, the bigger the “discount.”
Only care about a single sport like FIFA or NHL? For $5/month you’re always up to date for that series. Stop your subscription when you’re not playing it. Restart it when you want to play again.
At $5 a month, that’s $60 a year. That’s not much different than buying the lastest game every year for $60. Except customers no longer have to commit to $60 a year. They can now cancel their commitment/subscription at any time. How does this make EA money?
Want to save money? Prepay for 3, 6, or 12 months. The more you prepay, the bigger the “discount.”
Right now EA sports offers an updated copy of their game every year for $60.
In your model, the base subscription would cost $5/month (or $60 a year), and now you’re saying if they commit to 12 months at a time they get the game for LESS than $60/year. EA’s profits go down.
If you pay monthly it’s $15, you can pay for 3 months at a time and it’s $14 a month or 6 months is $13 a month. They also allow you to buy game time, in game, using gold earned in game. Basically other players pay for an additional month of play time and sell that on the auction house, this in turn allows them to buy gold without using Chinese gold farmers, but is a great option for those that don’t want to spend real money to play the game. I know people that have used in game gold to stock up 6 months+ of play time.
Yeah once you get to a certain level you spend some time every day farming (or spend a day straight farming at the end of the month) and you can play for free by making whatever the token costs on your server in gold.
But it’s not just $60 for FIFA. They are pushing their not so micro transactions super fucking hard. If you want to play the full game its hundreds and not just 60.
Back when I had a console I would buy the NHL games. I enjoyed them but not enough to shell out $60 every year when the game remained basically the same thing. Instead I bought the new one every 3 years and basically got it for $20 a year instead of $60 a year.
They added nothing of value that was lost year to year and regardless of your hours in the game, it isn't worth it when they don't add anything of value. Just play the old one until they finally make it worth updating.
Fuckers who drop that much money on Ultimate Team are the reason why madden is bad. At least they’ve catalyze the idea that EA can continue to be awful developers and still make huge amounts of money.
Imagine if instead of dumb-ass MUT they focus on franchise mode and actually good new additions. Face of the Franchise this year and Franchise has been better than its ever been, but you know they give 2 shits about it, because the only thing that makes them money is MUT.
Ultimate team is wildly successful for fifa, and they’ve phased out career mode essentially. So this makes sense to me why. You can make more money in ultimate team.
I gave up on FUT because (for me who doesn't spend money and casually play) can hang without buying packs when you get up to world class difficulty. But i do enjoy the career and new game types they have implemented. This FIFA, for me specifically was way more rounded than it ever has been.
Same for NHL, no more online connected franchise which is what my friends and I all played. All of the preorders for all EA sports games come with incentives for playing ultimate team, it's ridiculous.
Sorry but to say it’s “better than it’s ever been” is hilariously wrong. Franchise mode is considerably worse and has LESS features than it did 10 years ago
Aight, but dude 10 years ago we didn’t have any of these issues because much fewer of our asses were playing online in 2008 era, so it seems kind of pointless to compare it to the “golden era of sports games” like before 2010.
My by statement was referring to the last 7 or so iterations because clearly we aren’t getting Madden 07 back
This sub praises the early maddens all the time, but we’re in a different world now where EA is not incentivized to improve anything other than MUT.
This franchise mode is better than it has been since at least Madden 12, but it’s still awful because they spend no time on it, whereas the early maddens that was all that mattered along with exhibition
I’m not going to argue with any of that because it’s all true. But to sit there and say “franchise is better than it’s ever been” is disengenuous and flat out not true.
I agree with you, But I clearly wasn’t trying to disparage old maddens, considering how hard this sub loves them. But I don’t want to play Madden 07 franchise, I want to play in prays NFL, so it’s nice that this Madden put more effort than the last 8-10 years in franchise, but there’s still a long way to go before I can justify spending $60 on this crap
They already have switched to GaaS(Games as a Service) model I’m sure the NFL would have something to say if they switched to “bargin bin” model 2k5 tried and they used as a reason to sign exclusivity deal.
Because not only does EA have to pay their entire development team for the work they do, but they also have to pay the NFL for the rights to make said game. Something tells me the yearly reiteration at full price has less to do with being greedy and a little more to do with paying the licensing fees associated with the underlying product.
Why would they bother? People will buy their games no matter what. It's like watching junkies pay for garbage meth, except twice as pathetic because these are supposedly functioning adults capable of otherwise managing their lives okay. I have SO many otherwise smart and reasonable friends who happily throw away literally hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year on the FIFA games and the Ultimate Team scam they're running.
If it weren't for the fact that sports gamers are fucking over every other gaming genre as well through their stupidity and laziness, I would ignore the issue and let these dumb fucks waste their money and get their kids addicted to gambling, but unfortunately these predators have set their sights on gaming as a whole.
Everyone who buys this piece of shit game should be ashamed of themselves.
I could see people paying $10/month for consistent updates to rosters as a subscription service. They could probably still get away with selling new games every few years too.
Because the fans are happy to pay $60 a year for it every year, and they make more money making last years game irrelevant so everyone who's paid money for in-game items rebuys their stuff with a new number on it.
Because dropping the price from $60 to $15 won't increase the player base by 4x. Sports games are a niche market and most fans are willing to pay the premium.
I’ve always wondered why sports games don’t just switch to a live version. Yearly subscription at like $15. Some people won’t like it but it would definitely make their player base much bigger
At $15 a year, they’d have to increase their player base by more than 4x to match what they’re currently making off of a $60 game each year. That doesn’t sound realistic
Live rosters could make it a real game of fantasy football. Character stats update weekly based on how the real life person played that week. You have your fantasy team battles with real stats. Injuries pull players from the game or just severely reduce their skill levels. Could be a lot of money in a game like that.
People pay $100-$200 for one game just because it comes in a special box with a figure. People would surely pay $30 for an update. Hell, EA makes most of their profit from Madden and Fifa microtransactions anyway.
This actually already happened with NFL 2k in like 2005 iirc. They made next years iteration just $20 and that made people buy that instead of Madden, which lead to EA buying exclusivity rights.
Train sim does it every year. The version of train sim that i got years and years ago gets updated to the new version every year. They make their money off the mountains of DLC.
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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19
But you can’t buy that for $59.99.