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EA shuts down Visceral, moves Star Wars game to EA Vancouver/others

Interfectum

Member
ALL of those are examples of GAAS!

Sorry, no. Lets not get cute here. There is a big difference between UC4 having a multiplayer mode and some hats to purchase and EA retooling this Star Wars game to be a lootbox filled GaaS experience.

Clearly we need to stop putting every game that has MTX into the GaaS category and it needs to be split up more.
 

emrober5

Member
EA fucking sucks.

Dead Space 1 and 2 were amazing (3 was...good enough).

A Henning led Uncharted in the Star Wars universe would have been so, so good.

It's a damn shame.
 

Stygr

Banned
EA overall has a portfolio of hit games that reach a broad audience. For someone like Kennedy they're an ideal choice for Star Wars from a business perspective. It's not about how gamer's feel.


Yup, also EA is the best console publisher by revenue, last year they beat Ubisoft, Activision, Take-Two, Square Enix etc..
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
No.

They are singleplayer games with a distinct, separate service driven multiplayer. GaaS is like Destiny, PUBG, Shadow of Mordor, etc.
No, they're all GaaS with differing methods of player retention.

Sorry, no. Lets not get cute here. There is a big difference between UC4 having a multiplayer mode and some hats to purchase and EA retooling this Star Wars game to be a lootbox filled GaaS experience.

Clearly we need to stop putting every game that has MTX into the GaaS category and it needs to be split up more.
Clearly we need to stop making assumptions. Literally nothing about what they said indicates that the game is going to be lootbox filled. All they talked about is how they're shifting the game design to have more player agency.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
EA overall has a portfolio of hit games that reach a broad audience. For someone like Kennedy they're an ideal choice for Star Wars from a business perspective. It's not about how gamer's feel.
Ok.

I'll just say that I think the approach Disney/Marvel are taking with handing out individual licenses will prove significantly better for everyone involved.
 
Of fucking course EA had to fuck them over. I refuse to support this company any longer - I was going to buy the new NFS but now I'm not.

Good luck to everyone who got fired.
 

CHC

Member
Literally the worst publisher in the industry by such a wide margin.

Not only have they failed to produce compelling games time and time again despite sitting on a suite of great licenses (Crysis, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age, Dead Space), they are also completely poisonous to work with.

I absolutely don't blame Visceral but why any studio would ever, ever, ever want to associate with a publisher that is so widely known for grinding developers into their own doom, I have no idea.
 

jabuseika

Member
They're adding loot boxes, and probably some online component, games as a service.


Lol, who thought EA would make a single player game nowdays. They can't milk their customers if they can only sell it once.

And not after ME failed so badly.
 
It's kind of amazing how they go out of their way and flaunt that they hired Amy Hennig to then turn around, say fuck it, take all of her work away and then not give her credit. More than likely going to turn it into GaaS garbage. Goodjob EA, you're going to fail and it's going to be fun watching it :).
 

daveo42

Banned
You're assuming that Disney doesn't re-up the contract, which given they've actually bragged about EA's titles a lot and how they're notable positives for Disney's revenue, is certainly not impossible.

Part joke, part hope that another company can undercut EA and take the license and do something more substantial with it. As of now that won't happen as long as EA and Disney keep making fat stacks off of each other.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Does the number have to be THAT high in order for it to continue? Why can't it just be 3 to 5 million sold?

Then again, If I remember correctly, EA considers anything below 5 million a failure....wtf.

It doesn’t for the most part but the big 3 are chasing those figures.
 
Damn!

Dead Space 1-2 showed that they could make great games! It feels like they have been forced to make games that didn't use their strengths after that.

Didn't the leadership team more or less bail to form Sledgehammer after Dead Space 2? A bunch of new people in leadership roles feels like the perfect recipe for outside influences to get their way.
 
I will certainly mourn Dead Space, but it just baffles me how much struggle there seems to be with the Star Wars property. Such a shame, so much talent there.
 
Little Mons†er;252310595 said:
yeah the general public aren't into single player games anymore :/

Which is concerning for those of us that still enjoy those experiences. I'm sure we will still get some, but we won't get the amount we used to.
 
I never said single player is dying.

I said linear story based single player focused games are dead. And they are.

Go back 5 years ago and those games were everywhere. They essentially don't exist anymore in the current market

Open world is the only way you can still sell that sort of concept

You said "Every large scale single player game you can think of is 1st party only or Bethesda," which to me signals all types of single-player games, including open-world (large scale), not just linear story based single-player games. If you meant to say what you're saying now, then understood.

In regards to single-player allegedly dying, I was more referring to the other poster who said "traditional gaming is dead," as if gaming hasn't been constantly evolving.
 

Chuck

Still without luck
More years of work from Henig down the shitter. EA, not even once.

God this industry needs unionization.
 

Azzawon

Member
This is so shit. Fuck EA, and best of luck to those who have lost their jobs.

Can't help but think Hardline absolutely tanking had some role to play in this.
 

Apathy

Member
By the way, is there any reason why EA never SELLS these companies? Like if they're not going to do anything with these guys anymore I don't really see why they're never up for sale or just let go but EA retains all IP rights (not that they even do much with those anyway) or something to that effect. They always just go straight into the trashcan.

Most places wouldn't get bought if the IP's weren't included (or talent) and the IP's are all owned by EA not the studios.
 

TL21xx

Banned
Jeez.. It really sounds like they're scrapping the Star Wars games and making something else with what they had so far. Star Wars games just can't catch a break. EA has had this license for several years now and only produced two Battlefronts. Giving them full rights to make Star Wars games and not letting other publishers and developers in on it was such a huge mistake.

My thoughts exactly, this has without a doubt been the worst time to be a fan of Star Wars games. It kills me knowing that there are tons of really solid developers out there, both old and new, that would be a killer fit for the IP, but won't even get into the pitch room until 2023 at the earliest (assuming the 10 year deal started on the day of that announcement). Throw in the fact that EA BF1 was lacking in features and that EA BF2 is looking to be a mechanical mess between the changed shooting and loot boxes and it just leaves you really wanting...

Bummer for those that are at Visceral though, hopefully they land on their feet.
 

Stygr

Banned
Part joke, part hope that another company can undercut EA and take the license and do something more substantial with it. As of now that won't happen as long as EA and Disney keep making fat stacks off of each other.

I mean, can another company offer more than EA to get the license? I only see ACTIVION/BLIZZARD like a possibile buyer, the others? Nah.
 

Floody

Member
Name more than two the last SP games this gen that sold over 10million?

Why over 10m? Most games regardless of them being SP or MP or both don't hit that.
Anyway The Witcher 3, Pokemon Sun/Moon and probably Uncharted 4 by now. There's not many games a generation that hit 10m+.
 

Boke1879

Member
EA overall has a portfolio of hit games that reach a broad audience. For someone like Kennedy they're an ideal choice for Star Wars from a business perspective. It's not about how gamer's feel.

At all. First Battlefront sold 16 million.

second game will sell a lot as well and make money. EA is actually doing their jobs in this aspect.
 

Audioboxer

Member
DLC is gass? So we've had gass for a long time?

GaaS to some is any game that released a single patch that adds something. So we've had GaaS since 1990s PC games.

Most when they refer to GaaS are talking about monetizing the shit out of everything. "Service" referring to paying money for something. So, you can call TW3 GaaS because it has content patches and paid DLC, but people clearly hold it up as an example of DLC done right. The shit people talk down on is games absolutely riddled with MTs/loot boxes and paid space bux like its an STD.

The speculation here is that because it's difficult to give a linear SP game an STD, that might have played a part in wanting to axe this vision of this Star Wars game and try and turn it into an open world collectathon. That way there is more opportunity to ask people to pay to level up and pay for space bux.
 
No, they're all GaaS with differing methods of player retention.


Clearly we need to stop making assumptions. Literally nothing about what they said indicates that the game is going to be lootbox filled. All they talked about is how they're shifting the game design to have more player agency.

damage controlling this and trying to muddle the conversation as though we don't have plenty of context for this is a weird look, honestly
 

stryke

Member
I wonder Amy will do from here, is she still tied to the project? Pretty sure at one point she said the opportunity to work on Star Wars was what kept her in the industry.
 
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