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EA: “All Games Will Eventually Be Services”
Electronic Arts’ chief operating officer John Pleasants says the publisher is evolving from a software company to a live services company.
“If you believe all games will eventually be services - as I do - then the idea of game teams that make a game, ship it, and then do something else goes away. They will now ship and day one begins when the customer gives feedback to the live service,” Pleasants told VentureBeat.
According to Pleasants, the firm is repositioning itself to embrace the growing digital distribution market and changes to traditional publishing and marketing models.
“For anyone in software, the move is going to be like moving from Blockbuster to Netflix, record label to iTunes, Siebel to Salesforce.com. The way you distribute will be different. The way you charge will be different. There will be more permutations in pricing. Merchandising will be much more important. Co-marketing will be much more important.
“There’s no question that in a world where games are a service, the cost to deploy any one game should be coming down over time. We have been investing in infrastructure for that.”
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“If you believe all games will eventually be services - as I do - then the idea of game teams that make a game, ship it, and then do something else goes away. They will now ship and day one begins when the customer gives feedback to the live service,”
Translation; umm errrr, look... that app store thing for the iphone touch?, it is exploding in growth and that other thing, with the hot water coming out of it.. we didn't think of any of this stuff...we are sitting on a bunch of disks in baskets at gamestores........... lets float it as our idea using non standard gaming parlance such as 'services'. I can keep my job then.....
Best example I can think of is Halo 3 (or perhaps a more appropriate example, given that it's published by EA, would be Burnout Paradise.)
Both games use online connectivity to deliver a "service" around their games, adding to and changing the in-game experience (multiplayer or single-player) on a regular basis.
Double post. Sorry.
This isn't anything new. The developers make a game, publishers ship the game, & day one begins when people start buying it & complain because it's full of bugs.
Finally, after numerous updates/patches/etc., when everything is finally working correctly, they release a new game & the whole thing starts all over again.
How is this innovative or speculative? I think Microsoft made their career based on this very model.
It seems everyone has made their career based on this model. Developers are always pushing patches out of the door right after the game is released.
I think this is the case because the rise of fast internet and the ease at which it is accessed has made some developers a bit lazy in coding their games.
Old PC games were developed to make sure that there weren't any bugs, because there was no way to fix it after they were released.
Perhaps this isn't a new way forward for innovation, but rather a new way forward for laziness?
"It seems everyone has made their career based on this model. Developers are always pushing patches out of the door right after the game is released."
Sometimes even before :).
"I think this is the case because the rise of fast internet and the ease at which it is accessed has made some developers a bit lazy in coding their games."
Or maybe a bit greedy. Street Fighter 4 costumes ???
"Old PC games were developed to make sure that there weren't any bugs, because there was no way to fix it after they were released."
Yes, like Pool Of Radiance for example :). Or maybe you meant old like in the 80's :).
"Perhaps this isn't a new way forward for innovation, but rather a new way forward for laziness?"
I would say a new way forward micropayments. And this is actually a new very creative way as I think of it. You have this huge mass of creative "artists", brainstorming new fascinating ways to rip your wallet for non-delivered content. This will be huge business :).
I'm pretty sure he did mean the '80s. It took me three weeks to make the 7th Guest work.
I'm all for 'level-by-level" micro-payments. I can tell I'm going to hate a game pretty early on. I can see a bad game, (buggy/no fun/sloppy), even earlier. It would add accountability. I'm sure they won't do it this way, however.
They know when they're sitting on crap.
You can get a pretty good sense of the game also by playing the demo.
As for this games like services stuff EA is speaking of I think would be best applied to their sports games. Having a FIFA game that just updates every year, will benefit both the developer and the consumer.
Demos are far from accurate, though. I mean, from the demos, Dark Sector should've been the best game of '08.
And you will end up not owning a game. Used game sales are killed and you're only left playing what they want you to play and game modding on the PC will be neutered.
Sounds quite boring really.
Not at all. You buy a game like Halo 3, and every day (or week, or whatever) the developers are updating the multiplayer "hoppers" (mode selections), maintaining the leader boards and File Share services, things like that, occasionally releasing new map-packs, etc. But that doesn't stop you from selling your copy of Halo 3.
It would if the only way to get it was through digital distribution. That was his point I'm pretty sure.
Correct. I think there will be a push towards digital distribution.
I'm all for fighting piracy but not when it infringes on people's rights and unfortunately I think we're going to slowly lose more and more rights.
The funny part is, citing the Sims 3, a lot of games are obviously leaked from the studios.
We'll probably see torrents saying - "Own the full game, Cracked to save on Hard-Drive".
People who purchase games won't own then, but people who steal then will. It may increase piracy.
hope that is the way of the futre I have being saying this for a while now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZEJ4OJTgg8
Your life as it has been... is over. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
The iTunes analogy is a bad one. You buy a song one time and there is no further modification to it. Completely different from DLC and game patches/performance changes.
This makes sense for multiplayer games (as long as there's no subscription fee I'm open to it), but single-player? No way.