EAs record year: Lootboxes for all (Anthem Q1 2019)

[Ambrose Burnside]

Electronic Arts reported its fiscal year 2018 revenue at over $5.1 billion USD, a record-breaking year for the game-maker. That figure represents an increase of about $305 million over EA's FY2017 numbers.

EA credits its financial success for 2018 to expanding reach of its "leading franchises" including FIFA, Battlefield and The Sims, "to more players across more platforms and geographies."

During its call with investors, EA briefly touched on Anthem, BioWare's new, original IP scheduled to come out in the first quarter of 2019, calling it a "fundamentally social experience."

Even though Electronic Arts pulled loot boxes from last year's Star Wars: Battlefront II, that decision has not deterred the company's plans going forward. In an investor call today, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson was adamant that loot boxes should not be considered gambling.

Wilson's remarks come after the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) last month found EA and FIFA 18 in violation of national gambling laws.

"We're working with all the industry associations globally and with regulators in various jurisdictions and territories, [and] have established that programs like FIFA Ultimate Team are not gambling," Wilson continued.

Source and Source

[GameHED]

Scary stuff.

I'm not a EA fan (killed the dreamcast) but if you are into their games you have a lot of great pay to win games to purchase in the future from these guys.

Meanwhile the rest of us will be playing the real games.

You have to admit though: the future is all about games as a service. And the way to win is offer new skins and new horse armour to keep profiting from the online portion of the titles. As this seeps into the single player portion of gaming, we single player guys are screwed unless its a major first party or second party title owned by the three major hardware console manufacturers.

This is why I posted about RDR2 potentially being a worry. Rockstar may cut single player stuff and place it into the online portion and over time it goes online only in the future where the single player part is merely a tutorial section for multiplayer. I know that sounds extreme but the greedy liards control all the decisions now.

Only CDProjekt Red is pure these days. The SJW do not believe in "practice makes perfect". They want the parents to just buy them victory and this is a generational thing.

IT's the reason cobra kai is so popular on youtube. The older generation is sick of all the communist and socialist ideas in movies and videogames and turning to the past for entertainment. Don't think that won't happen in gaming too. ("I should win because I'm special not because I train and improve myself" <--this idea is on the way out as generation Z rebels against their parents who promote learned helplessness in pop culture. Look at what they did to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi as evidence of this)

Johnny is basically the Karate Kid equivalent to Vegeta in Dragonball Super pretty much.

[Peppermint Lounge]

What happened to you, Bioware? You used to be beautiful.

[pilonv1]

Of course they shouldn't be considered gambling because then they'd have to be regulated and couldn't be put in the games they market to minors

[lestat]

I can't even remember the last big EA release, BF II under performed, so I assume this all pretty much FIFA UT crap. They're just turning into a slot machine company now.

[F for Fake]

What happened to this?
http://www.games-ranch.com/forum/viewto ... 23#p435623" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/28/eas-day ... proar.html

Electronic Arts' shareholders are running for the hills this month and for good reason.

The company's profitable business model is now at risk after angry gamers revolted over its aggressive in-game moneymaking strategy in "Star Wars Battlefront II."

EA's stock is down 8.5 percent month to date through Tuesday compared with the S&P 500's 2 percent gain, wiping out $3.1 billion of shareholder value. Its competitors Take-Two and Activision Blizzardshares are up 5 percent and 0.7 percent respectively during the same time period.


After EA gave a Dec. quarter sales forecast slightly below Wall Street estimates on Oct. 31, some analysts suspected it was due to the Stars Wars title. The shares fell 4 percent the following day.

suck it EA!

[GameHED]

The angry gamers are still angry and it affects profits. But the overall number of sports fans buy the sport sim regardless, and this outweighs the hardcore gamers.

It's just like how games based on popular tv shows or anime may sell lot of copies because there are fans of the show who will purchase a shit game over a good one because the shit one is related to the thing they are a fan of. EA is all about locking down license and making shit or generic titles from it. (while fans of the things the game is based on buy them) That's how they survive.