EA Outs Battlefield 4, Plans To Charge $70 For New Games

Justus writes "Posts at NeoGAF and IGN show that a quickly-removed Origin advertisement for Medal of Honor: Warfighter reveals plans for Battlefield 4 and a new-game cost of $70. With Battlefield 3 DLC promised through 2013 and PC games cheaper than ever with things like the Steam Summer Sale, are gamers ready to buy Battlefield 4 at next-gen pricing?"

Comments

Outs?

[Antarius]

"Outs" Battlefield 4? What, are they going to be in rainbow camouflage or something?

launching an exe from a web browser is stupid

[locopuyo]

I stopped buying EA games when every single one started having a web interfaced that required me to download a browser plug-in to launch a windows EXE on my local hard drive.
I don't want to download your shitty browser plug-in and be forced to use a shitty browser just to launch the game. I want to click one button to launch the executable and be in the game.
I won't spend $70 on any EA game. I won't even play a Free to Play EA game because of this.

Remember when Street Fighter II came out for SNES?

[the_humeister]

It was $70 at Target. That was almost 20 years ago. Now games have better graphics, better replayability, on-line multiplayer, etc. and they sell new from $40-$60. That's not bad given the progression since then. I'd ask you to get off my lawn now, but it's been paved over with concrete.

My 16 bit games cost 50 bucks

[Osgeld]

that was 20 something years ago, and hell if you dont want to pay 70 2012 bucks for a game that has higher production quality than most movies from 20 something years ago and gives you months of entertainment, wait

yea OMFG wait, by Christmas it will be in the sub 30$ bin at walmart and still have thousands of players.

of all the things people can bitch and whine about new games, cost is not really one of them

a 2600 game would cost you 77 bucks today
a SNES game would cost you 79 bucks today
Metal Gear solid would cost you 84 bucks today

(and we haven't even left the 90's yet)
so please STFU that game prices have not inflated equally with everything else, they have actually gotten cheaper!

Re:My 16 bit games cost 50 bucks

[LandoCalrizzian]

Of all the examples you listed, how many of those ~$80 can you still play 20 years later after the studio is gone or no longer supporting the game? The way EA is setting up Origin, you are just renting the games and they only guarantee access for 2years in the Origin TOS. With DLC and in game ads, they are overcharging for the game.

Re:Yawn

[quantumphaze]

It's even worse when they charge those insane prices for downloadable copies. With online downloads they no longer have the bullshit excuse of more expensive distribution in Australia yet still geo-discriminate (it's totally a word) to not undercut the physical copies. Skyrim was $89 on Steam at launch.

Then they wonder why piracy is so high.

Re:Remember when Street Fighter II came out for SN

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is flawed--$35 of that $70 price was for the media itself because cartridges were expensive little buggers. Today DVD's cost pennies.

Re:uBI and aCTIVision do it too

[Xest]

I don't really want to pay more for a product, no one does, but I'd be one of those people who'd pay more for BF4. Why?

Because I've had more hours out of it than just about any game I paid $60 for by quite a margin. The cost relative to the amount of entertainment I'd get out of it would still be better than most $60 titles - to me, $70 for 120hrs of entertainment is still far better than than the average $60 for maybe 10 - 20hrs of entertainment I get out of most games.

In contrast I don't pay $70 for CoD anymore, because it just got ever shitter since World at War culminating in the abysmal fuckup of a game that was Black Ops. If it started to get better again I might, but the franchise has just dropped to the level of a A shooter rather than an AAA shooter, and I can pick up any number of A rated shooters released over the years for fuck all - they're 10 a penny.

I don't have a problem paying a bit more for something that's actually worth it, what I wont pay more for is shit.

Games are already too expensive

[mjwx]

I don't really want to pay more for a product, no one does, but I'd be one of those people who'd pay more for BF4. Why?

I wont be. Why?

Because Battlefield 3 was shit. Because they made the unlocables too lopsided, because after they charge you the US$70 which translates into no less then A$150 they still want $20 odd a month for premium which like unlockables, will be so lopsided as to make the game unplayable if you don't pony up the monthly danegeld, sorry, subscription fee.

BF 1942 and BF2 were works of art, BF Bad Company 2 was good, BF3 was just a huge steaming pile of unbalanced crap that I stopped playing after 3 days.

In contrast I don't pay $70 for CoD anymore

I haven't paid for COD since COD United Offensive back when CoD was a decent game.

I don't have a problem paying a bit more for something that's actually worth it, what I wont pay more for is shit.

I do have a problem with paying more, games are overpriced as they are but there's always some numpty that doesn't think when handing over money for the latest call of halo or whatever. To be frank, it's what is killing the games industry by rewarding publishers who release mediocre sequels with a large percentage of the budget dedicated to marketing.

Re:Games are already too expensive

[MacGyver2210]

As a professional video game developer on the same platforms, I have to ask: why are you charging more? The cost of bringing games like this to the market has plummeted for large dev houses compared to their retail cost. Their labor is at a fixed rate and has an easy transition to existing properties like this, leaving just content development and level planning for a "new" rehashed game from one of their franchises.

If they were rewriting the graphics and physics engine each time, I would believe it and say it's a fair price - those parts of a game are a lot of work when done from scratch. However, I would guess they're just using Havok or Unreal or something of that nature instead, which just costs them a small licensing fee and not a shit-ton of programmer time. That alone should knock some of the game price off.

They have a subsidized online subscription service. On top of the already-too-expensive game purchase, they want you to pay a 'premium fee' to play online? Hell no. You get one or the other, trying to collect on both is far too greedy and people just aren't going to buy your steaming pile of rehashed done-and-done-again shit.

I still play Counterstrike / Condition Zero / Day of Defeat / HL2 Deathmatch which ran me about $10 years and years ago. Those are some rock-solid classic shooters, and I find the community supports them even more now that the gawkers and "ooh, new shiny" players have moved on to other games.

EA is just in this for money - don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They don't have their staff or customers' best interests in mind, and they never will. Don't believe the hype, and don't feed the trolls.