Battlefield 3 (above) suffered on consoles when compared to the visually superior PC version. That’s unlikely to be the same with Battlefield 4, which EA have said this evening is looking amazing.
Speaking to investors in a teleconference about the PlayStation 4, the publishers said that their absence from last week’s reveal isn’t indicative of their appreciation for the console, which they say is “between 8 & 10 times the power of current generation.”
EA have never been more prepared for a new console launch and had plenty of great things to say about Sony’s new device. Things that took months now take days to do, games are running flawlessly at 1080p and 60 FPS, and the increase in cost is just 5 – 10% per game.
They say microtransactions will appear in all their games – “consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business” – and cited figures of $25 Million revenue just from microtransactions.
They also hinted that we’ll see plenty of next-gen EA games between now and E3, and suggested that the PS4 and Xbox 720 will launch very close to each other.
EA has slimmed down their line-up from 85 games to 15 for next-gen. They say games will likely retail at $69.99 at the start.
Update: We’ve been contacted by EA Corporate Communications to clarify that Blake Jorgensen “misspoke” and that he actually intended to use example pricing tiers of $59 and $49 in this “hypothetical discussion about pricing patterns at the beginning of a hardware cycle.”
Via GAF.
McProley
“consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business” Really?! Ive not heard a single consumer say they are enjoying it?
Alex C
$25 million says they are. :(
McProley
Sad times. Whatever happened to the good old days of shareware?
rossthebassist
$25 million are using it. i for one don’t enjoy it lol.
Smallville2106
If freemium, micro transactions, online passes and pay to win etc are going to be a big part of next gen I can see myself giving it a miss. From the price above games are sounding like they are going to be £49.99 in the UK, then there will be the inevitable DLC which will be more expensive then micro transactions etc.
No thanks.
Youles
I’m of the same opinion. I suspect I will get a PS4, although I will probably only buy a handful of games each year, but then buy all the DLC and extras that go with them.
Bilbo_bobbins
I’m in the same boat, I will never use micro transactions and DLC only gets purchased if it looks excellent. If games really are £50 a pop then it looks like hardly any new games will be purchased and I’ll be looking at pre-owned (depending on what they have in store for those)
yogh_wayne
So far I’ve played two EA games that feature a micro-transaction system (Mass Effect 3 MP & Dead Space 3), and in both you can get the exact same content with an in-game currency, which you get for just playing the game. I expect their future games will feature a similar system, and actually paying for the micro-transaction content is for the impatient, who also buy “time-saver” unlock-all DLC packs.
I’m more worried about the statement that they slim down their line-up from 85 to 15 games. This gen they published several commercially not very successful but brilliant new-IP games (e.g. Mirror’s Edge, the first Dead Space, Shadows of the Damned) next to their established franchises. Hope they’ll keep this up next gen.
hazelam
i’d imagine the first year they’ll stick to their core franchises, like their sports titles, maybe a Battlefield, possibly a WWE title as they bought the license off THQ didn’t they?
if they follow the pattern from the 360 launch, they’ll be cut down, content lite versions of them.
still, at least this isn’t a world cup year, or there’d be three fifas this year. ^_^
doomsday619
2K Got the WWE licence.
cc_star
It’s the thin end of the wedge & helping people get accustomed to the the mechanics.
take FIFA for example, there’s been an in-game store for a few versions now centred around EA’s ‘Ultimate Team’ card trading mode, this year the store also features stat boosts to single player career mode.with each passing year that in-game store will cover more & more of the games standard mechanics until FIFA is basically a football version of Simpsons: Tapped Out
The same will no doubt go for Dead Space, Mass Effect or any other of EAs franchise.
Just because it happening slowly it doesn’t mean it’s not happening… and it’s all EA bang on about whenever anyone reports on anything they say… until their PR dept catch up & release a leak of a new game so that everyone forgets about it.
Whenever I hear Gabe Newell speak, Valve take a different point of view… he seems to want to turn games into player2player trading platforms and virtual goods and in-game economies being the future. Players can obviously earn money & Valve take a percentage.
Activision, Blizzard & Bungie will probably take this route too & whilst the games might not have a sub like WoW. In Diablo 3 we see the ‘auction house’ for people to sell in-game items.
I think I prefer the Valve/Activision/Blizzard & probably Bungie vision in comparison to EA’s ever encroaching pay2play.
It would seem Sony could take either route with the PS4’s Drive Club featuring either pay2play or player2player trading as a way to monetise the title outside of initial sale & DLC.
MICKY17
I hope he’s implying that BF4 will run 1080p and 60FPS. That would be sweet!!
Alex C
Yep, sounds like it.
Bilbo_bobbins
very sweet indeed, but again lets hope its not all looks like BF3 was. They need to make sure the horrible style of the blue tinge goes and lens flare (when you aren’t even looking down the barrel) plus input lag/coms/lag/poor game mechanics too.
The game was good and is fixed quite well, but its taken them a year after the game was released. I’m hoping they have taken a lot of what the community/forum has said about the current game, but then I don’t have much hope as they are pretty much non-existent now.
cc_star
Interesting… given Killzone 4’s 1080p30
cc_star
And also the fact that Bf has destructible environments, with real physics – as opposed to pre-baked bullethole ‘destruction’ in KZ4
If EA can make it do that with a launch title, it bodes very well for the long term.
Loxstokk
So you’ve played Killzone 4?
Sorry to be facetious, but you simply don’t know what that particular game does or does not offer, and god only knows what EA will put out. It is exciting however that EA feel that this is a much more straight forward console to work with – less technical issues will hopefully allow the development teams to focus more energy on creativity.
freezebug2
That is impressive indeed. All’s we need now are the server connections to push those mighty polygon counts through the coke cans and strings lag free :P
CR8ZYH0RSE
What unit of measurement have they used to come up with ‘8 to 10 times more powerful’?
I would like to see this device they use for measuring.
Roynaldo
Seems the 9 button on the keyboard wasnt working.
cc_star
1.84 Teraflops… and also the bandwidth of the fast GDDR5 memory at 176GB/s
Think it all adds up to being 8 times more powerful from a raw computing standpoint, not sure if they were just talking generally when saying 8-10.
Roynaldo
My fear is that no matter how powerful the system is, if the Sony/EA servers are like they are now then it will never handle all that extra demand.
cam the man
I hope they are going to beef them up a fair bit before launch.
The Lone Steven
And yet, i bet that they will still force their developers to release a game half complete.
They are going to put mircotransactions in every game aren’t they? Suddenly, my interest for DA3 has just dropped.
As for the PS4 being 8 to 10 times more powerful. I am a bit surprised but i am hoping that we will get bigger open world RPGs and open world games that are decent.
seedaripper1973
GAH! screw BF4……i want Bad Company 3 godammit!!
Kronik76
Agreed! BC2 was miles better than BF3, had hours of fun in the multiplayer.
seedaripper1973
The destruction was better as well (considering BF3 was frostbite 2.0,why was the destrction worse??) bloody crap……..
Broonba
BF4 might look great but I bet the servers will be powered by a mouse running inside a wheel……..i.e. Shite.
Motalla
As long as you pay for the servers, and “extra” fee to guarantee that you won’t end-up on the servers of yesteryear.
Motalla
I sometimes think that those investor information meetings do more harm than good, considering that the gamers also read these business plans.
cc_star
It’s basically what the publishers are doing, how they see gamers… without all the news being parsed through a PR department.
Later or tomorrow it will be spun by PR and re-packaged by churnalism