The Midagedgamer report for 3-8-2013
This week EA CFO backpedals, Tomb Raider, SimCity =launch
day fails, and more!
So it seems that last week's comment by EA CFO Blake J.
Jorgensen caused an uproar loud enough to cause him to issue a
"clarification." concerning
micro-transactions. Jorgensen claimed he
was only referring to mobile games most of which are already "Free to
Play"...
"The real core of
the micro transaction business is within the mobile part of our business which
is the free-to-play business."
Of course in the same breath he still likes the idea of
milking a franchise...
"It allows someone to take a game that maybe they
played for 1,000 hours and play it for 2,000 hours...We are very conscious that
we don't want to make consumers feel like they're not getting value. We want to
make sure consumers are getting value."
Paying twice for a game isn't much of a value proposition to
me Blake.
So Tomb Raider launched this week and if you happen to have
a high performance Nvidia based gaming rig your experience probably
sucked. Nvidia's on the case but blames
the developer for not getting the code to them on time."In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games,"
At this stage in the game (pardon the pun) why are we still coding games for specific GPU's? That crap should have went by the wayside somewhere around the last sale of the 3DFX Voodoo 5 cards.
While we're on the subject...SimCity launched this week or
at least that's what everyone expected to happen when they logged in to their
Origin client Tuesday morning (March 5).
Similar to the dreaded "Error 37" suffered on Diablo 3's
launch day users found themselves in endless queues just trying to launch the
game. It got bad enough that Amazon
actually suspended sales with a note on the games product page saying,
"Important Note on "SimCity "Many customers
are having issues connecting to the "SimCity" servers. EA is actively
working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue
will be fixed. Please visit
https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information."
Yet another example of a promising game brought down by an
unbridled profit motive. Why pay full
price for a game that's so dependent on being online? Is it DRM or just a part of the EA strategy
to constantly sell you something even after you bought the product.
Just as in Diablo 3 SimCity requires a constant Internet
connection even for single player gameplay.
Which is ridiculous for a so-called Triple-A title. Of course the tech pundits turned tech
apologists acknowledging that this was indeed a problem but that this was the
way things were going to be from now on and citing how "smooth"
Diablo 3 runs now.
In PS4 news it appears that NVIDIA's PhysX and APEX technologies will be showing up
in Sony's next generation console.
Considering it's an AMD GPU, that proves once and for all that the much
hyped physics engine is nothing more than a bit of driver code not exclusive to
NVIDIA hardware.
So as you're enjoying fluttering flags and rippling waves
lapping the shore of some virtual sea remember that apparently NVIDIAs done what AMD couldn't.
That's not fanboy, it's fact...
Finally some commentary...
It's interesting to note that this week's launch day
failures of two highly anticipated games shared a common flaw. The need to be connected to the
Internet just to play a game (although Tomb Raider is somewhat less draconian in its approach.). Then we
have EA's CFO looking at games as nothing more than an opportunity to nickel
and dime you to death and a pattern starts to reveal itself.
It's all about creating a constant revenue stream instead of
concentrating on making a quality product.
Everyone's got a right to make a buck but sacrificing the core product
for it is inexcusable. When you release
a flawed game like Warfighter or inadequately prepare your infrastructure for a
launch day that requires everyone to phone home, you're not doing your due
diligence.
Worse, the tech pundits have turned tech apologists for the
industry every time we have an event like this and quite simply it needs to
stop. It is NOT acceptable to require an
online connection to play the single player mode of ANY game. It's also NOT acceptable to require an
Internet connection without first adequately preparing the back end to support
it.
I mean, how could you NOT know what the load was going to be
when most games have pre-orders 3 to 6 months out from launch day?
The response, "Oops! so sorry"
Not good enough guys, this isn't your first trip to the
rodeo. There is no excuse but it seems
everyone is making them anyway.
There's no reason to keep accepting this. Remember, you're the customer, the game
industries' bread and butter and you are under no obligation to buy their
wares. It seems the industry has
forgotten that fact and replaced humility with arrogance.
If you want to fix it the answer is simple. If you don't want to be fleeced stop acting
like a sheep. Ignore the industry apologists
and the lame excuses. This is not the
future and NOT the way it has to be but nothing changes until you take
action. Vote with your wallet and
support publishers who focus on a quality product instead of their money machine.
There's an old adage that says build a better mousetrap and
the world will beat a path to your door.
We need to remind the game publishers of that lesson. They need to stop focusing on revenue
projections and start focusing on making a good product. Do that and the revenue will take care of
itself.
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