Electronic Arts Is Shifting Their Focus To The Players, And It’s About Time

Electronic Arts has earned a rather nasty public image over the last few years and they’re looking to turn that around. It mostly started back when they released the last SimCity.

When SimCity hit retail it was met with horrible server issues, showing that EA hadn’t properly prepared for the sudden swarm of online users. To make it worse, the game was only playable with an internet connection. Instead of apologizing for their mistake, the company decided to start banning players from the servers just for complaining about the mess they created, even censoring their own customer service number from the forums.

Even with the fixed servers, SimCity was a letdown.

After that particular snafu, EA Games had earned the shameful award for the worst U.S. company of the year.

Moving forward, Electronic Arts had then released a highly anticipated multiplayer shooter called Battlefield 4, which suffered from the same server issues as before. Add to this the fact that the game hit retail unfinished (to cash in on the Xbox One and PS4 launch) and it proved once again that EA really didn’t care as long as they got their money. The next Battlefield is already in development and they’re still fixing the last one.

It wasn’t until Respawn Entertainment released Titanfall that EA finally started doing things right, but the damage had been done for two years already. Titanfall had become the reason some gamers chose the Xbox One (it was a Microsoft exclusive title) and it was a major turning point for EA Games.

The difference was that with Titanfall, they had hosted a Beta release and had the gamers actually test it out and give their input before the game even hit retail. The game was a solid success in spite of the unfortunate nickname of “Call of Duty clone.” Electronic Arts gave us an ongoing experience which would keep gamers hooked.

#Gaming #Indusury Under the new direction of CEO Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts is shifting its mentality to… http://t.co/JIITNALelW

— GamersTechWay (@gamers_tech_way) June 25, 2014

It was probably the success of Respawn Entertainment’s killer IP which convinced Electronic Arts that they needed to shift their focus in a new direction. It’s this new direction which may be causing delays on a lot of new titles lately, including Batman: Arkham Knight and the six months late Watch Dogs.

CEO Andrew Wilson explained:

“In all honesty, as I came into the role, there was this sense in the marketplace that maybe we weren’t doing all that we could for the player. And my objective number one was to really re-instill a player-first mentality; a player-first culture inside the organization.

“I want to move us away from just a straight hit-driven business. I want to move us into the live services business. If you think about Star Wars, I don’t want them to come in and play a Star Wars game two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, I want them to come in and be part of a universe, immersed in an interactive experience they play for six months, eight months, ten months.”

Instead of focusing on getting the game out in time for a concrete release date, EA Games is now focusing on the player and delivering a solid long-term gameplay experience, even if it means delaying the game and making the gamers wait longer than expected.

Would you rather see Battlefield: Hardline hit a 2014 release date or play a finished and polished release with minimal server issues? Electronic Arts is betting on the latter.

[image via eurogamer]