EA Cuts Current-Gen Prices

Gamespot is reporting that Electronic Arts is cutting the prices of their PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube titles, now that next-gen consoles are beginning to hit the scene. Their 360, DS, and PSP titles are unaffected. From the article: "The prices of several of the company's current-generation games have been reduced in an attempt to get the most out its current crop of titles. Madden NFL 06, NBA Live 06, FIFA 06, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire all seem to have benefited from the price drop, as their Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and PC versions are all now available for $29.99. Other games affected by the price slashing include Need for Speed Most Wanted (now $39.99) and Medal of Honor: European Assault (now $19.99)."

Comments

MMORPGs?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Where's the price cuts for, say, Ultima Online? I'd rather see some discounts in the MMORPG space - current or not - than in the console arena, but I imagine that since the client base for MMORPGs is fairly constant (PC users), they won't drop the prices there. Oh well, perhaps better luck next time.

Re:MMORPGs?

[pHatidic]

Back when I played UO the game cost 50 dollars and came with a 30 day free trial. Now the game costs 20 dollars and comes with 45 days free. Granted, I think the monthly cost should be cheaper now that it's 8 years old, but it still has come down somewhat. The thing is though that if you can get past the 2D isometric graphics, UO is still more advanced after 8 years than WoW is today. Granted, UO has been dumbed down since for noobs since I quit, but even still.

Re:MMORPGs?

[Motherfucking Shit]

The thing is though that if you can get past the 2D isometric graphics, UO is still more advanced after 8 years than WoW is today.

For me, this isn't something to get past; I love the isometric view as opposed to the 3D client, or even the clients of other games. I've been a UO player since 1999, and while I haven't played in many months, I still keep my account paid up. I guess it's force of habit. Twice now I've sold off my accounts on eBay for a nice profit, and sworn UO off forever. And I always came back eventually.

The next time I get "the itch," it will be far easier to jump back with a current account (and house, and gold, and possessions) than to start anew. And that's worth the monthly fee to me, even as I do nothing with it. I learned my lesson the first two times; selling your accounts and houses and whatnot is a bad move in the long run. I wish I'd never sold my original accounts; if I still had them, I'd be a veritable gazillionaire in a land full of billionaires.

But as long as EA is handing out discounts, hey, how about something for the multi-year loyal MMORPG customers who have paid the fees month in and month out, and purchased the necessary upgrades. That's all I'm sayin'.

Re:MMORPGs?

[pHatidic]

Yeah, I eventually sold my account the summer before frosh year of HS for a little over 600 bucks. That was six and a half years ago. The thing was that back then there was a huge housing shortage, or so called housing shortage. The real issue was people were just too dumb to figure out how to place their houses. So I just ran around the desert between Britain and Yew (IIRC, it's been a while) clicking on all the signs waiting for houses to decay. Then I'd place a house and sell it for double what I payed for the deed. It got to the point where I could just make basically infinite money for not really doing anything so I got really bored of it. Once you have enough money to buy your first deed for a small house the game is economically over if you are smart.

BTW, I agree that the isometric graphics are way better than this 3D crap they have now. The original Asheron's Call had the best 3D graphics that I have seen, and even those were overrated because they completely kill the interactivity that is there in UO. And frankly, the graphics in WoW are downright terrible, which is especially bad considering it came out five years after the AC beta test.

Re:MMORPGs?

[Castar]

Yes... I think it's interesting that the more graphically advanced games get, the fewer actual gameplay features they seem to have. No 3D MMORPG has equalled the gameplay complexity of a good MUD yet.

Surprising? Nah.

[karolgajewski]

This is hardly surprising, but it would be interesting to see if there was a price difference in titles that were released simultaneously on previous and next-gen consoles.

This just in: Sale taking place.

[iainl]

So, EA have taken some of the games they released well before Christmas, and reduced their prices in January? Shocking. One would almost think that it's Sale season.

Mind you, I quite fancy getting the latest SSX on the Gamecube, so I shouldn't complain too much.

What is this?

[IAmTheDave]

Sorry, I don't play WoW - what's this AQ gate thingy, and why is it bad?

Re:What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

50 milliseconds you say? How interesti ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Frist prost!!!

[eno2001]

Suck it gamerz!!!!

Coulda saved $10

[sirmikester]

Damn, I bought my copy of Madden 06 too early... if I had just waited a week I would have saved some money! EA is teh sux0rz!

EA's PC games still rushed-out

[Aceticon]

My recent personal experience with one of EA's PC games (Battlefield 2) is that what could've been one of the best multiplayer FPSs of the decade was rushed out the door and ended up un-optimized (needs more than 1Gb memory), buggy and unbalanced.

To add injury to insult, they've been more busy putting out expansions than fixing bugs/improving code (2nd expansion in 6 months is coming out).

I get the impression that while most of the industry has moved onwards - in terms of beter testing, tuning and balancing their games before release - EA is still stuck in 1990s mode of ship it ASAP even if full of bugs 'cause their customers think that a game crashing is "normal".

Are they also like this outside PC gaming?

Re:EA's PC games still rushed-out

[iainl]

I admittedly didn't buy the game until the 1.3 patch (early November, if that helps), but the game ran just fine for me, to be honest. I do have 1Gb of memory, mind you.

Re:EA's PC games still rushed-out

[Anonymous Coward]

Timesplitters 3 (EA published) crashed my gamecube, and the co-op mode has some really laughable problems - i.e. move past a certain zone will trigger your companion to teleport near to you, but they can often end up near another trigger zone, so you can end up teleporting back and forth repeatedly. Good game, but not at the level of quality I'd expect.

Re:EA's PC games still rushed-out

[KDR_11k]

DICE (the people who actually made BF2) has always been producing buggy games.

Re:EA's PC games still rushed-out

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here is that EA is, or soon will be "most of the industry".

I am not amused either what they have done with BF2 and also how they overcharged my credit card converting $ to Euros one for one without prior note, and effectively steal peoples money. Or with their support who blames everything on partners and keeps closing my unresolved support cases, if they reply at all.

Personally, BF2 Special Forces and Need for Speed Most Wanted will be the last EA games I have ever bought. They can take their coding sweat shops (discussed earlier on Slashdot), their unfinished games and their outright rediculous support elsewhere for all I care.

so...

[MadJo]

so basically you get even more "value" for your buck if you stick to the current-gen systems?

Given that the 360 versions of all EA's sports games were in fact products with less features.
Fifa 06 on the XBox360 has less gameplay options than the same game on the Xbox1? How can this be?
Same goes for NBA 06 btw.
i don't want shiny, sweaty basketball players, I want gameplay that matches my set.

They should slash the prices of their next-gen crappy ware.

Re:so...

[Winterblink]

If I had mod points I'd mod you up. You hit it right no the head with this. There's still TONS of games being made for the current gen, and a humongous back library for each platform. With expensive, hard-to-find hardware, overpriced crummy software, is there even a real reason to take the plunge yet other than for the sake of early adoption?

Current-gen?

[Z0mb1eman]

So they're only slashing prices on games they're selling, and not on future games that aren't being sold yet and don't have a price to slash?

What's wrong with saying "EA Cuts Console Game Prices"? Is it too easy to understand? Not enough next-gen/current-gen buzzwords? Why not say "curr-gen" and be the first to dazzle and confuse your friends with a new buzzword?

Bah.

Price Cuts = Quality Cuts?

[Zephiris]

EA's overall game quality (including expansions/patches for various games) has been dwindling significantly in recent years. It seems to me that they peaked with games like Need for Speed: High Stakes, and SimCity 3000. High Stakes had among the best driving experience for games (Underground didn't hold a candle), including more realistic physics, full weather possibility, and if you hit something, another car, a heavy stone barrier, it actually caused damage to the car, which affected its performance. You could get knocked out of a race (with a hefty repair bill) if you were too careless, while most newer games in the series have physics inspired by "Cruisin' USA" (for those who remember the arcade game), you can hit anything, including doing flips and completely wiping out, and your car rights itself and you just hit the gas. You never need to use the brakes any more. Feasibly, a 'B' class car (the slowest, but easiest to handle) could beat a AAA class car (the best top speed, lousy acceleration) on many maps, if you were skilled enough, and these types of matches could happen, in the newer ones, it appears that you can only race with cars of the exact same class, making it less a challenge of skill, and more who doesn't get side-swiped by another competing car.
SC3K was generally 'better' as well, including making larger cities quite a bit more interesting and easy to manage. Even older games old NHL98/99 were generally just more satisfying than newer editions, I imagine the same goes for most of their sports titles and other games. They seem to've given up on actually making the incremental releases more fun to play.
But perhaps even worse than that, they don't seem to be making (m)any 'innovative' games anymore, and of course there were the accusations of how they treated employees like slaves. I wonder if EA's really losing touch with reality. After all, their "Big 2006" Q1 release for PC is yet another lackluster Sims 2 expansion pack.

What ever happened to games like Starflight, Skate or Die!, Road Rash, Desert Strike, and Syndicate? Their new idea of games to publish seems to be constantly repeated titles in series which don't really offer anything new. Not to be too stingy, but the only game recently I can think of off-hand that was pretty decent/original was Undying, which was somewhat standard survival horror, but did it using an FPS engine with many unique gameplay elements.

Not according to Best Buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Their 360, DS, and PSP titles are unaffected.

My local Best Buy store has high quality, 4 foot cardboard displays for XBOX 360 asserting
'EA drops these titles $20' ... I didn't look too much further since the boxes were marked $60.

It was definitely NOT plain XBOX, and it was too professionally done not to be vendor-provided.