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Battlefield 5's Poor Sales Numbers Have Become a Disaster For Electronic Arts (seekingalpha.com)
dryriver writes: Electronic Arts has mismanaged the Battlefield franchise in the past -- BF3 and BF4 were not great from a gameplay perspective -- but with Battlefield 5, Electronic Arts is facing a real disaster that has sent its stock plummeting on the stock exchanges. First came the fierce cultural internet backlash from gamers to the Battlefield 5 reveal trailer -- EA tried to inject so much 21st Century gender diversity and Hollywood action-movie style fighting into what was supposed to be a reasonably historically accurate WWII shooter trailer, that many gamers felt the game would be "a seriously inauthentic portrayal of what WW2 warfare really was like." Then the game sold very poorly after a delayed launch date -- far less than the mildly successful WW1 shooter Battlefield 1 for example -- and is currently discounted by 33% to 50% at all major game retailers to try desperately to push sales numbers up. This was also a disaster for Nvidia, as Battlefield 5 was the tentpole title supposed to entice gamers into buying expensive new realtime ray-tracing Nvidia 2080 RTX GPUs.
Electronic Arts had to revise its earnings estimates for 2019, some hedge funds sold off their EA stock, fearing low sales and stiff competition from popular Battle Royal games like Fortnite and PUBG, and EA stock is currently 45% down from its peak value in July 2018. EA had already become seriously unpopular with gamers because of annoying Battlefield franchise in-game mechanisms such as heaving to buy decent-aiming-accuracy weapons with additional cash, having to constantly pay for additional DLC content and game maps, and the very poor multiplayer gameplay of its two Star Wars: Battlefront titles (essentially Battlefield with laser blasters set in the Star Wars Universe). It seems that with Battlefield 5, EA -- not a company known for listening to its customers -- finally hit a brick wall, in the form of many Battlefield fans simply not buying or playing Battlefield 5.
Electronic Arts had to revise its earnings estimates for 2019, some hedge funds sold off their EA stock, fearing low sales and stiff competition from popular Battle Royal games like Fortnite and PUBG, and EA stock is currently 45% down from its peak value in July 2018. EA had already become seriously unpopular with gamers because of annoying Battlefield franchise in-game mechanisms such as heaving to buy decent-aiming-accuracy weapons with additional cash, having to constantly pay for additional DLC content and game maps, and the very poor multiplayer gameplay of its two Star Wars: Battlefront titles (essentially Battlefield with laser blasters set in the Star Wars Universe). It seems that with Battlefield 5, EA -- not a company known for listening to its customers -- finally hit a brick wall, in the form of many Battlefield fans simply not buying or playing Battlefield 5.
Catering to the perpetually offended instead of your loyal gamer fanbase did not work out for you, EA? How surprising.
... and practices are coming back at them."
FTFY
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Nvidia's problem wasn't the tie in with Battlefield, more so the pricing, if you decide to add 30% to the price, expect sales to not be quite so hot.
It doesn't make sense on the surface. Its not like purple haired womyn's studies majors are a sizable demographic for FPSs. Its bizarre how so many companies like outdoors stores, comics, and gaming that are do not have SJWs anywhere near their target audience are so obsessed with currying their favor that they're willing to lose out on billions and antagonize their actual core audience. Then you realize this is a religious ideology to them. Theres now a sizable number of people in power who hold the philosophy..or religion of 'social justice' as strongly as the most zealous priest or mullah. They don't care about losing money anymore. They are completely unrepentant the usual corporate spin apology is now replaced with the company continuing to double down on blaming the fans. All that matters is spreading and putting the ideology into power. Looks like we've finally found the one thing corporations appear to love more than money and it seems to be bowing down in worship of SJWism.
" And having the voice of women screeching and screaming as they kill and die in every online game was a psychological idiocy beyond words."
No shit!
Men are hardcoded to want to protect females. SJWs think that's a bad thing because this is triggered more the more feminine a female is. The war against femininity and beauty is very openly fought among those people...
And then you want to sell a game that is primarily directed at males (because females aren't interested in war... even the suffragettes were fighting for a right to vote for females without being under threat of a draft... women are not dumb enough to want to go to war) and fill it up with deus ex machina female characters who can do all that men can even though they have way less muscle mass that is way less efficient than men's.
Meanwhile, you get to hear them dying around you, which triggers very different feelings of failure in men than hearing males perish.
Who could have foreseen that THAT would not sell?!
The worst and most blatant sign of total incompetence is the way they portrayed females in wars. There have been many examples of tried and true female war heroes. There was no need to embellish (and implying that women need embellishment to have a place in the scenario).
I don't know about the US, but god damn it, the French Resistance was full of women, wasn't it? What about Russian sharpshooters and nightwitches?
It is not hard to find examples of capable women in war. They are so easy to find, in fact, that there are memes about them! To not work with that is either an unrealistic amount of stupidity or done on purpose.
a woman with disabilities
The lady in trailer is not disabled, thats not a prosthethic as WW2 era prosthethics can't do things like reload a bolt-action rifle, machine gun or artillery piece.
That lady is cybernetically enhanced . Too bad its not a cyberpunk game.
Come on, DICE can make awesome games. Take Pinball Fantasies for example. The problem is clearly EA.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Those "perpetually offended" that people are talking about aren't the "real gamers".
Who went after Rimworld? Who went after Doom Eternal? Who went after Cyberpunk's twitter for a joke tweet they made?
Real gamers don't get offended by these kinds of cosmetics. We are in it for the fun and the gameplay.
Its not about just this one incident but the trend of a vocal minority of activists. (Yes the proportion of people who want gender balanced armies for the sake of inclusiveness are still a minority among gaming audiences.) pursuing men into every hobby he takes refuge in and despoiling it with their neurosis. Its not enough for you to rule over us during work. You want to rule over our play too. Since we should all be good humored why not make a movie about MLK where you turn him into a white man or take a beloved historical female figure and make her into a man?
The "perpetually offended" are the basement dwelling internet trolls that just wants to destroy something for the lulz. They are mad about some game grabbing attention of a part of the player base and not playing their favorite shitty game.
Kinda like how activists destroyed the previous creative landscape and now 80% of female protagonists and growing in the arts are variations of the asexual androgynous Rey archetype? Or how they launch a media inquisition against every game that has females that are considered 'too sexy' especially if the character does not have enough masculinity to counter this. Female characters must conform to this narrow behavioural pattern or be unremarkable or they'll be targeted ie DOA, Dragon's Crown, etc. Its gotten to the point that games with major women outside these approved archetypes are now very rare outside of Japanese studios. And this is just the craziness related to feminism.
It wouldn't hurt if companies like EA, Activision et al suffered a backlash and financial shock for acting like greedy jerks. It might remind them that they're supposed to be producing games, not skinner boxes.