EA Will Implement Microtransactions into Its Future Games
By Date: 02-28-2013 Views:
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In a speech at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen explained a plan, which will be implementing microtransactions into every single game it makes in the future.
"The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games," he revealed. "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."
However, Jorgensen also pointed out that it's not quite as simple as letting people buy a gun or costume whenever they feel like it.
"We've got to have a very strong back-end to make sure that we can operate a business like that. If you're doing microtransactions and you're processing credit cards for every one of those microtransactions, you'll get eaten alive. And so Rajat's [Taneja, EA Global CTO] team has built an amazing back-end to be able to manage that and manage it much more profitably. We've outsourced a lot of that stuff, historically. We're bringing that all in-house now."
The plan might be a popular move with investors, but much of EA's core audience has yet to be convinced, with fans reacting poorly to the inclusion of microtransactions in EA's recent Dead Space 3. However, as both Jorgensen and Taneja were keen to point out, other major EA franchises such as FIFA, Battlefield and The Simpsons: Tapped Out, already reap huge financial benefits from granulated payment scales.
Source: GameIndustry
