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?

[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'.

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

[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.

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.