Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson described the company’s missteps in monetization for Star Wars: Battlefront II as a “learning opportunity” in a conference call today with analysts. From the perspective of gamers who were angry about EA’s approach to in-game purchases of loot crates, that’s an understatement.
Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson described the company’s missteps in monetization for Star Wars: Battlefront II as a “learning opportunity” in a conference call today with analysts. From the perspective of gamers who were angry about EA’s approach to in-game purchases of loot crates, that’s an understatement.
“Having made adjustments based on sentiment and community data coming out of the beta and early trials, we ultimately made the decision to pull in-game purchases out of the game prior to launch,” Wilson said, in the closest thing EA has come to a mea culpa yet.
He added, “We never intended to build an experience that could be seen as unfair or lacking clear progression, so we removed the feature that was taking away from what fans were telling us was an otherwise great game. We are fortunate to have such passionate players that will tell us when we get it right, and when we don’t. We’re now working hard on more updates that will meet the needs of our players, and we hope to bring these to the Battlefront II community in the months ahead.”
EA acknowledged that sales of Battlefront II — 9 million during the holiday quarter that ended December 31 — were below expectations because of the loot crate controversy. Fans were upset that you could buy powerful characters like Darth Vader using loot crate purchases, rather than earning the characters purely through gameplay in multiplayer combat. EA backed off on the aggressive monetization plan, but it said it would reinstitute the loot crates when the timing was right.
“We remain committed to the franchise, the team is working diligently on new content and live updates,” Wilson said in an analyst conference call. “Response has been strong to the content we released so far. We will look after that community and fulfill the commitment we made to them for a long time to come.”
As to whether the loot crate problem hurt EA’s relations with Disney, Wilson said, “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the press. We are very proactive in relationships in service of our players. We have good relations with Disney. When we have the right model for players, I have no doubt we will get support for Disney for that. The big picture is there is no one size fits all for event-driven live services. But at the very core we should start with a foundation of player choice.”
Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer at EA, said in the call that the next big Star Wars game to drop will likely come from Respawn Entertainment, which EA bought last quarter for $455 million, in fiscal 2020. That means it will ship in the year ending March 31,2020.
