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EA Selling Tutorials Via Xbox Live
So, not only is EA selling in-game money for the Godfather via Xbox Live, but now they're actually trying to wring money from consumers so they can know how to play the games they bought. Joystiq has some commentary on EA's newest practice: charging for tutorials. From the article: "We decided to try one of the videos out, purchasing a Passing strategy guide for Madden NFL 07. The 246.34 MB downloaded provided little that would help our game. The video depicts a series of in-game passes with the occasional overhead view; once or twice arrows and yellow circles were used to highlight a player but it did not complement the announcer. To understand the voice-over commentary, it is assumed that you have a good grasp on formation and position terminology. If 'using the safety to cover the back' goes over your head, this video is not for you -- then again, if you are well-versed in football slang, you will likely learn nothing new anyways." I know Microsoft has kept a hands-off policy on this so far, but this stuff has to stop before companies like EA and Q! drag their product through the mud.
Wow, welcome to about a month ago. EA has done like 10 more attrocious things since then even. I can understand it is hard to keep up, since they are constantly innovating new and improved ways to stick it to the gaming community.
If the safety you're using to cover your back goes over your head, then you might be getting sacked soon.
God spoke to me.
Before they drag them through the mud? I thought they pretty much had not only dragged them through the mud, but then doused them in jet fuel, lit them on fire, and then to top it off took a nice long piss on the ashes. Or maybe that was their customers. I can never keep track. But I'm not bitter or anything.
Well I don't drink a lot of coffee...
The precedent here is obviously Prima, which publishes strategy guides and charges money for them. Evil bastards. I've been boycotting them, but it doesn't seem to have put them out of business. However, with a big company like EA setting a precedent like this, not only are gamers in trouble, but it's likely to creep out and affect everything. Soon enough, mark my words, companies are going to charge for things like food and housing, and that's when we're really in trouble.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
It isn't actualy that evil of a concept. selling strategy guides online? so what?
I know, in this case aparently the strategy guides are not worth the paper they are not printed on. However as a general concept it is nifty, especialy if it was done video commentary style.
Note: I would never buy one, but that is b/c strategy guides are pointless as there are pleanty of sites out there that offer these things for free (gamefaqs).
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
It's "Q?" Not "Q!"
Why? I'd like nothing better then to see the money hungry EA go up in flames. I stopped buying their games because
- They release limited feature games, then SELL you an expansion later that the game was supposed to be from the start (C&C Generals, BF2, etc)
- Almost all of the games I have from them contain critical gameplay bugs that keep you from completing the game. Tech support ignores you and tells you to reinstall and try again. (Look for Attack Troll in BFM2)(
- On-line games such as BF2 have server issues that again, their tech support deny and blame on other things. Tell you to re-install a patch. But if you wait a few days and do nothing they start working with no comments from EA (search for BF2 Auth server was down for days)
- Lastly their new money hungry angle to add spyware to games to make even more money off of consumers. (BF2142)
I vote with my money, and they will not be getting any of it. Let them burn. Maybe after the dust settles they might get a clue what they've done to their customers.Companies have been selling strategy guides for years. This isn't different, they are just providing the guides online. These aren't the actual instructions for playing the game, but tips on how to play the game better.
Funny how something with a quote from the topic, talking about that quote, gets mod as OFF-TOPIC.
For whenever EA does something yet again to screw their customer base while giving themselves more money.. "eavil"
Nothing particularly evil about selling tutorials or strategy guides. Just let the market decide. If these online guides are worth anything, then people will buy, if not, they won't. It'll be interesting to see how these online guides develop in the console world and if the games begin to be built with hooks for the optional guides that will allow the player to easily try out what he/she just learned. No one wants to be nickel and dimed to death, but if the guides add real value and aren't just a cynical afterthought, then good things could be ahead.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
...in the shops, and they too are usually pretty useless, so what's the difference when they're selling them through Live or whatever else?
This stuff wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it, but the fact is that there are people dumb enough to buy this (Or cheat codes, uniforms, etc.), this will only make the problem worse.
Before EA did this, the game was what it was, and there were strategy guides available on the net or in book form. There were even people (seriously) selling one-on-one "training" sessions. Now that EA has released this, the game is still unchanged, all those strategy guides are still available, and now there is an additional resource to maybe learn something if you are a football fan but not-so-great at Madden.
... Come on.
So, how exactly is selling a new informational product "evil"? Oh that's right, it's informational, and information wants to be free, right?
they will try to get GameFaqs and others shut down to "protect their IP" or some other stupid shit.
The next version of Doom IDKFA won't give you keys and ammo, it will open up the menu where you can pay 5$ to have keys and ammo (on a per level per session basis of course).
it effects their bottom line. If no one buys it, they'll tweak it or called it a failed experiment. It seems to me that they have no clue nor care about what gamers want. Rile yourselves up and post wherever you can to complain but they won't care unless no one buys which I hope, really hope that very few people do.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
They aren't selling the tutorial, they are selling strategy guides online. I don't like EA, but with all the crap they do you don't have to make stuff up to make them look bad. In this case, what they are doing is fine. Seriously editors, act like adults and professionals by not allowing false titles. Even if you are personally biased, it shouldn't show in the job you do.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
This is what companies do when they're given access to brand new markets or distribution options - they're going to throw a bunch of new ideas/concepts at us and they'll see what we'll buy.
This shouldn't be very shocking to anyone. For the first time, these developers can reach the console audience sans middle-man, which means that they can develop and offer products that distribution costs alone once prohibited. It never would have been worth developing bite-size tutorials that would ship on CDs to retail outlets and then to the consumer - retail markup, distribution costs, and physical materials would have been far too prohibitive. Now they can create material and just upload it.
The problem now is sorting out what gamers are willing to pay for, and at what price. If they don't try a whole bunch of new ideas and offer diverse products, then we'll never see anything REALLY cool come out of this. And of course many ideas will flop - this one looks like a prime candidate - but we've still got to cut these guys some slack as they determine what's realistic to sell online.
-TheBaron2
That's why people still shell out tons of money on Textbooks, Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Thesauruses etc. Information is valuable, and thus it makes sense that people charge for it.
However, no one's going to pay me $2 to find out what my favorite food is. There is information which is largely worthless, and information which is so close to worthless that it might as well be.
When information is worthless, charging for it makes people angry. This is one of those cases. Anyone who understands these tutorials is already a major football fan and unlike to get much out of them. Anyone who doesn't is going to look up the mumbo jumbo on the internet or from a friend and then find out how basic and silly it all is.
If these tutorials were extensive, explained the terminology, and even went as far as advanced strategies and possibilties (if you so disired) they'd be potentially worth paying for. As they stand they are blatant attempts to squeeze money out of us. It didn't cost them a million dollars to make the tutorial, so why are they charging like it did? If it really did cost that much, EA really needs to audit their accountants, fire some incompetant managers, and reevaluate their overgrown bureaucracy.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
It looks like a lot of people are confused why this is bad. The reason is that it's a potential conflict of interest. If a game company (EA in this case) stands to profit from people buying strategy guides, then they've just given themselves a big reason to make strategy guides more valuable. This could very likely mean less effort to make games easier to play, or an outright effort to make games HARD to play without the strategy guide.
Now, if they took it too far, I think there would be a big outlash from the community. For instance, let's say "EA NFL whatever" made you press L,L,R,D,U,A,B,START to get into the game, and made you buy the strategy guide to find that out. This is an extreme example that would obviously piss people off.
But use your imagination - especially with EA's track record, I would be very surprised if they didn't milk the strategy guides at the expense of game quality, especially in their "monopoly" games.
Sigh.. EA is charging gamers for the instruction manual it sounds like. It sounds like the major issue here is the shoddy quality of the video produced along with the cheap method of distribution. It's not costing EA a ton of money to send the video, and from the review it doesn't sound like it took a lot of money to produce it either. In the end they're just trying to take those extra 6 bucks from you. Nintendo has sold paper guides for its games for years, however Nintendo guides are generally of exceptional quality and detail. Prima guides are known for their poor quality and sometimes even wrong information. They cover more than how-to-play as well. How-to-play tutorials have been parts of video games for years without shelling out extra. With X360 titles costing $60 each, it really shows how such a basic feature is lacking, even at the high price.
I think you're confused -- game publishers already share in the profits of officially licensed print strategy guides, which account for the vast majority of the current market.
It's a dilema every gamer has. Who is the worst?
Why is it that these videos are included with all the other platforms except the 360? I haven't had the chance to play Madden '07 on the PS2, but I was told that those same videos that the 360 users are paying for are included for free with the PS2, the GC and the standard XBox version of the game. Why should 360 owners have to pay more for freely included content when they already pay a premium for the title that the other consoles don't have to pay for?
1) Make difficult game with unobvious solutions
2) Sell tutorials for game
3) More profit!!!
Twinstiq, game news