EA is ‘making changes to the business practices that gamers clearly don?t like’
The disastrous launch of SimCity is over and done with. Emerging from the wreckage with two million sales and counting, Electronic Arts is considering allowing the game to be played offline like many of us originally wanted. Speaking to GamesBeat, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said what we were thinking: that the backlash resulted, at least partially, in The Sims 4 being announced as a “single-player, offline experience.”
“In the last few months, we have started making changes to the business practices that gamers clearly don’t like,” said Gibeau. “In the spring, we dropped our online pass program for consoles — both next-generation and current-generation. We listened to the feedback on SimCity and decided that The Sims 4 would be built as a single-player, offline experience. We announced some new intellectual properties at E3 and will unveil more new games in the months ahead.”
Asked about lessons learned from the game’s launch, Gibeau explained that “In retrospect, our biggest takeaway is that we are lucky that SimCity has an enormous number of loyal fans. That first week after launch was really rough — an experience nobody wants to live through again. Since then, we’ve sold more than two million units, and the number of people logging in and playing is holding steady. SimCity is a success. However, underestimating demand in the first month was a major miss. We hope that the game and the service we’ve provided since then meets the fans’ high standards.” Have you bothered to go back in? How … how is it?
EA exec Frank Gibeau: Betting on next-gen consoles, mobile, and doing right by consumers (interview) [GamesBeat]
