Despite being well-made productions (for the most part),
Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Need for Speed: Payback, and
Mass Effect: Andromeda all crushed & burned and underperformed, failing to live up to Electronic Arts' sales goals. Thanks to the aggressive and mindless use of loot boxes, microtransactions and never stopping monetization, 2017 was one of the worst years in the publisher's history.
According to Patrick Söderlund, a long-time EA executive who was made the company’s chief design officer last week, EA has learned from the past mistakes. “
I’d be lying to you if I said that what’s happened with Battlefront and what’s happened with everything surrounding loot boxes and these things haven’t had an effect on EA as a company and an effect on us as management,” he explained. “
We can shy away from it and pretend like it didn’t happen, or we can act responsibly and realize that we made some mistakes, and try to rectify those mistakes and learn from them.”
It looks like the new chief design officer is willing to help the company understand its frustrating strategy. “
We have taken significant steps as a company to review and understand the mechanics around monetization, loot boxes, and other things in our games before they go to market,” Söderlund said. “
For games that come next, for Battlefield or for Anthem, [players have] made it very clear that we can’t afford to make similar mistakes. And we won’t.” Microtransactions will be added back to
Battlefront II starting this week, but will only include cosmetic items.
“We have to take action and show people that we’re serious about building the best possible products, that we’re serious about treating the players fair, and we’re here to make the best possible entertainment that we can,” he concluded. “And in the cases where we don’t get it right, we just have to listen and learn from it and be better.” EA will have a great opportunity to show its new face at the upcoming E3 and the publisher's EA Play. The annual three day event will be held from June 9-11 at the Hollywood Palladium, and live to the world on EA.com.
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