EA Wants "To Be 90 Plus Metacritic at Everything"

[Sofus]

Hahahahaha!!!

Origin = GFWL


EA, could you please remind me what you do better than Steam? First you proclaim that SW:TOR is the next WoW killer.. and then you try and make a fuss about your pathetic store.

 

[Naeras]

If they want to be 90+ metacritic at everything, they're going to have to use a lot of money on bribing all those critics.

 

[Strazdas]

"If MySpace had stayed the one answer in social networking and no one switched to Facebook, then we'd all be stuck on MySpace right now and we wouldn't have had the Facebook phenomenon," he said.

and the world would be so much smarter that we would probably colonize space by now.

 

[thethird0611]

You know, im gonna keep a level head here (unlike alot of the anti-EA 'cus I can' people), and say that this is somewhat a good stance for EA to take.

EA coming out and say it wants to have a metacritic score (consumer rated) of 90+ means that they WANT to please the consumer. That is a damn good thing, and I dont care who you are. "EA doesnt care!", well that have to at least care a little for that to happen. They have to take care of their consumers to be rated high by them.

Also, I believe alot of why Origin failed is exactly why you cant talk about EA in this forum... because there is so much rage against them. They make jobs, put out games many people love, and actually LISTEN to the consumers (Free patches to fix any bugs after its sent out? Thats caring. If not, they would just let them go.). Even though that happens, they are vilified. Then, when they decide to branch out to give Steam competition, they are completely bombarded with anti-origin, even when people hadnt used it. They are trying to make a platform that took Valve how many years to make? But I rant.

And no, im not pro or anti EA. I believe alot of their practices are horrid, but I believe they help to make some great games. So, yeah. Thats my 2 cents.

 

[Doom972]

While they do a very fine job of making these old games work well on modern systems, a quick look at the forums can show you that there are some game-specific problems people have to solve by themselves. Not everyone has the same problem you have with Battlefront 2, but some do and have to either resolve it on their own or find a solution by someone else.

A game should work when you buy it. I shouldn't have to search the entire internet for a common problem to have it fixed. It should work. This is not something specific to me, it's a broad issue with the game. It directly impacts my ability to play and enjoy the product. It's not that much to ask for things to work when I buy them.

I agree with everything you said this post. I just see it as something I expect the game developer to solve by releasing a patch. I don't see what the store I bought the game from has to do with this.

 

[lapan]

EA has no chance of achieving this before they fire their PR departement and collectively empty the memory of every single customer.

 

[itsthesheppy]

Nice to see they're so unrealistic.

Metacritic is maybe the worst thing going on in the video game world today.

Nah. EA's far worse.

I dunno man. EA makes bad games, sure, but a) one of the reasons they make bad games is fishing for high metacritic scores, and b) other companies do that too. Even if EA was a terribad factory (and it is) , metacritic makes other companies be terribad too.

 

[GreyJedi]

He went on to list a few hard numbers about the Origin service; Over 12 million have downloaded it so far, it's picked up 50 partners in the space of a year and it made an impressive $140 million last year, a 400% increase of the year before.

Yeah, but mostly only because you're obliged to use it if you want to play ME3, Dead Space 2, Dragon Age 2, etc... (Just like I originally just downloaded Steam because HL2 made me do it, of course.)

I'm all for more competition, but I don't see them outclassing Steam any time soon. Primarily because I don't trust EA with my credit card info, either.

 

[Wintermoot]

hmmm EA has metric tons of money so that,s not really going to be hard

 

[5-0]

Yeah good luck with that EA. You've got a long long way to go.

 

[minimacker]

Unlike Valve, which offers matchmaking (not amazing, but alright), Community (good for messaging and organising events) and great customer support, all Origin offers is another platform for buying expensive games.

Don't forget the sales!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.377755-Origin-Boss-Says-Steam-Sales-Cheapen-Intellectual-Property

 

[Wicky_42]

Unfortunately it never works like you'd think it should for me - I have to go offline whilst I'm still online to get into offline mode when I start up Steam again without an internet connection. Most frustrating, and seriously reduces the entire point. Would be nice if they could fix it so it does what it implies it should (and it's always silly frustrating when you click 'star offline' and it bounces back an error saying 'Unable to connect to Steam'. Well DUH!)

If your connection is spotty, try going into offline mode when your connection is still good, and turning off your computer while its still in offline mode. I find that, though not completely devoid of problems, I run into much fewer problems. I reliably used steam for several months with no internet connection at all that way. Its a weak point definately, but going into offline mode before you need to be offline seems to significantly mitigate the problem.

You misunderstand - it's kinda pointless having the option to start in offline mode if there's no connection, but requiring a connection to do that. If there's no internet connection, but you've previously used the licenses for the games on that machine, why on earth shouldn't you be able to play them if your internet goes down? It just feels like there's something a bit broken with the offline mode.

But yeah, once offline it works fine; it's just getting there that's a bit unintuitive.

 

[Wicky_42]

"There are better mousetraps that ultimately get built out of this innovation,"

"Mousetraps"? See, viewing your system as a 'trap' to hold people against their way is a BAD view point to be launching from.

Just saying.

Unless, of course, this is a really common American saying...

Its a very common American saying. Mousetraps are notoriously effective for a remarkably cheap price, so attempts to improve on the simple design usually ends up needlessly complicating the whole business. If your being cynical, it usually implies that a person is wasting there time trying to compete with something that they just can't improve on. If charitable, it's more like a respectable attempt to improve and innovate something already considered perfect.

However, your interpretation is more appropriate then EAs

Thanks for the info

 

[Riobux]

DeMartini accepts that Origin isn't doing anything particularly new, but argues that it's a worthwhile product nonetheless.

"If MySpace had stayed the one answer in social networking and no one switched to Facebook, then we'd all be stuck on MySpace right now and we wouldn't have had the Facebook phenomenon," he said.

"EA is in a really interesting place," he added. "We have this bar that is set so high, so that whether it is any of our games or services, we want to be 90 plus Metacritic at everything.

EA would be a comedy act, a brilliant satire written about gaming companies by Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee, if it wasn't oh so real.

 

[Woodsey]

And it's that attitude that (in part) makes people hate them.

Simply put: they won't be better than Valve. They can't be. They're not a private company, and so they have far, far less maneuverability. The best thing they can do is learn to market themselves correctly, and "we won't do big sales because they cheapen IPs" and "we want to be 90+ Metacritic on everything" is not the way to do it.

Didn't they start doing sales on Origin like, a week after making that announcement?

Briefly. Which just made them look more retarded, really.

 

[MyNameIsNowNotMyName]

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
-Ayn Rand-

"Only people who have no leg to stand on quote Ayn Rand"

- Me

What, it's one the better quotes. Also, what you said wasn't even that much of a quote, you need to work on it.

 

[Somebloke]

Yes I do have From Ashes. Yes I have played it offline on a number of occasions. I've even had my connection drop in the middle of the game, it waited a few seconds then switched to offline mode.

O-ho, neat!
I'd be jealous, but since you have similar problems of your own, only elsewhere, I suppose we're both equally stunted.

 

[Thoric485]

I'm sure they'll spare no expense on marketing and bribes to achieve this.

 

[Xanadu84]

Unfortunately it never works like you'd think it should for me - I have to go offline whilst I'm still online to get into offline mode when I start up Steam again without an internet connection. Most frustrating, and seriously reduces the entire point. Would be nice if they could fix it so it does what it implies it should (and it's always silly frustrating when you click 'star offline' and it bounces back an error saying 'Unable to connect to Steam'. Well DUH!)

If your connection is spotty, try going into offline mode when your connection is still good, and turning off your computer while its still in offline mode. I find that, though not completely devoid of problems, I run into much fewer problems. I reliably used steam for several months with no internet connection at all that way. Its a weak point definately, but going into offline mode before you need to be offline seems to significantly mitigate the problem.

You misunderstand - it's kinda pointless having the option to start in offline mode if there's no connection, but requiring a connection to do that. If there's no internet connection, but you've previously used the licenses for the games on that machine, why on earth shouldn't you be able to play them if your internet goes down? It just feels like there's something a bit broken with the offline mode.

But yeah, once offline it works fine; it's just getting there that's a bit unintuitive.

I'm definitely not fixing the issue, and it is a problem, I'm just presenting a preventative measure. If your in online mode on steam, and you want to shut down your computer, go into offline mode before the shutdown. It seems to succeed in starting up in offline mode if you ended your last session in offline mode. If you don't need to use online features, just go into offline mode and leave it their until you do need online features. In fact, I find that often times, if my connection goes down and steam has no connection, I can still go into offline mode, and if I shut down my computer and turn it back on with no connection, Steam will start up in offline mode just fine if it ended in offline mode, but will have troubles if I ended online.

Yes, the glut of off/on/line/mode makes what I just said sound like a mess. I apologize. Hope ythis makes sense, because I do know what your saying.

 

[Canyoureadmydeadpan]

Hey everyone, want to see my impersonation of EA?
"We at EA want to heave 90's on everything, but at the same time we want to piss on our customers and charge them for things like online gaming, or on disk/1st day DLC. I guess what I'm trying to say is, we want to piss on our customers, but we want to trickle just the right amount of piss so that they don't notice. That is why we have Origin. Origin allows you to overpay for games we make that we threaten to take away from other digital distributors if we don't get the things we want. Origin has over 12 million downloads so far... and sure, many of those users quit using it once they realized we were a shitty over priced version of steam, but think of all the money we COULD make if we with hold our games and force people to buy direct from us. We want to be an indy company, that is why we will be bringing you all the most uninspired AAA titles that we wasted so much money on. LOOK GAMES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE UNLESS WE'RE THE ONES SELLING YOU THE UNINSPIRED REPETIVE CRAP OUR ANALYTICS AND MARKETING TEAM DECIDED WOULD SAFELY TURN A PROFIT, AND THE REST OF YOU NEED TO LOWER YOUR PRICES!"