EA executive vice president Patrick Soderlund has said that the launch of Battlefield 3 was just a “starting point” for the game, the beginning of what he believes is a service as opposed to a game. Presumably, that’s his way of saying they’ve got shitloads of DLC to sell you.
“The Battlefield 3 launch was the starting point,” he said. “We look at this as a long-term service, where we want the consumers to continually get updates and new content and hopefully improvements to the product as we go. So the launch was the start, and we’re not letting the foot off the gas. We’re going to continue to push and obviously improve the experience, give more content as we go and hopefully make people want to stay inside our universe.
“The holiday season is clearly very competitive, as we know. We all respect what Call of Duty brings and what they’re going to come with, and I think that we have an industry-leading multiplayer game that will make people want to stay with us, frankly. If you look at all the reviews that we’ve gotten, not a single one that I’ve seen has been negative towards the multiplayer. In fact, many state that the multiplayer is the multiplayer experience to have, the best in the world. And if I can continue to harness that and work on improving that and give the consumers more of that, then hopefully they’re going to feel loyal to us and stay.”
This whole “long-term service” idea is something that publishers have gotten more attracted to lately. If that’s the case, forcing online pass codes and $60 price tags into the equation seems a bit rich.
EA: ‘Battlefield 3 launch was the starting point’ [Videogamer]
