EA turns hypocrite, discounts games on Origin up to 87.5 percent
geek.com
geek.com
> DeMartini agreed with this position: "What Steam does might be teaching the customer, 'I might not want it in the first month, but if I look at it in four or five months, I'll get one of those weekend sales and I'll buy it at that time at 75 per cent off.'
> "It's an approach, and I'm not going to say it's not working for Valve. It certainly works for Valve; I don't know if it works as well for the publishing partners who take on the majority of that haircut."
If you mention Steam to someone it's likely they'll think of Steam sales, there is a huge following of Steam sales on reddit etc and I don't think EA wants to (or ever will) become that. I'm not sure if he really meant they would never do sales like this, I suspect he meant more they would not become a core part of the service, Steam sales are a core part of Steam.
Origin has had sales before this interview, I have an email from March when they did a (very public) 50% off sale and they did a similar sale in December last year. There's a big difference between a few older games at ~75% off and having half of your entire inventory at 90% off, including games released 6 months prior.
I was one of them, and instead, I now have legally purchased far more games than I will ever get round to playing. Keeping prices high in order to finance bloated AAA titles (that are IMHO, generally unappealing) leaves my money on the table.
I don't play games, so don't use either Origin or Steam. But even I can see that branding EA "hypocrites" is exactly the same as accusing a politician of "flip-flopping". They made a call, it was the wrong thing to do, so they've listened to feedback and have now gone another way.
What's the problem? Are you really complaining about Origin selling games for less money? Perhaps you'd prefer it if they cancelled the sale and put their prices up?
It was a stupid statement to make to begin with. He accused Steam, the most successful digital games distribution service available, of going about their business the wrong way and that Origin wouldn't make the same mistake.
I think this is more of a complaint about the way EA do business. What was the point of DeMartini's original comments? Who was he trying to appeal to as it certainly wasn't gamers.
Actually.. I think what EA really needs to start doing is using Origin to fund games ala Kickstarter. I think that's what their fans really want.
How does a game franchise show value? By making money, not by being full price for the life cycle of the product.
Of course they would have sales like this, a game cannot stay full price forever. Especially since Valve can prove with sales numbers that you make more money in the long run with these type of sales. The guy at the top may say we won't have steep sales because he thinks it cheapens the franchise but the guys who count the money will eventually slap him down, tell him to shut up, and slash the price of that game to make more money.
Selling a game at 87.5% and earning $5 > selling a game at 100% and earning $0. EA chases the cash and talk is cheap.
However, I do not want to manage and run multiple clients, multiple accounts across multiple websites, etc...
Thus, I have chosen Steam as my choice and have stubbornly stuck to that.
I want Mass Effect 3 quite badly. Maybe someday there will be a Steam version. I have hopes.
There's so much irrational hate on the internet.