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Looks like EA access early access backfired badly for Mass Effect: Andromeda

if you can launch a game for subscribers on early access you can launch it for everyone

in effect they are holding the game back one week for non-subscribers, and that, specifically, is the shitty part of the program

otherwise, it's probably a good service service for the kind of people who enjoy ea games

No you can't, because retailers (which the gaming industry is still massively beholden to, because everyone is scared of digital futures) would fucking kill you if you started selling all your games 10 days early digitally. So, you can't simply just release the game 10 days earlier, because whilst you can push to digital storefronts from the moment a game goes gold, you can't magically have it appear on a disc in stores around the world.
 
I'm proud of EA for this. Letting people try something for ten hours to see if they like it for themselves, a lot of people seem to be split on how to feel about the title. It might well hurt them in the short run but now they don't have to deal with anyone complaining that they hid the game or its problems: they definitely haven't.
Yeah, in this case EA is not being anti-consumer at all. I love the trilogy and despite the negativity I wanted to take a look for myself plus EA had a few games there that I would have probably bought anyway this year to try out. So $5 to test out MEA and several other games is not a bad proposition.

Now in my case I decided I will not buy MEA due to various issues until some time down the road but it's still good of EA to let people test out new games for quite a long time compared to regular demo.
 
So based on reviews and player impressions, Mass Effect Andromeda seems to be a bit of a dud. It seems to me as if Bioware/EA was aware of this fact and wanted to cover it by employing the Fallout 4 launch strategy: give almost no information pre-launch so that pre-orders and pre-release hype give you good sales before people realize that your game isnÂ’t great.

Reviews went up the day before the game came out. There was a whole series of videos covering every aspect of the game. If they were hiding it, they did a shitty fucking job.
 
I find it interesting people find the demo aspect of EA Access to be "pro-consumer" at all.

If it was worded as "We'll delay all games for those who don't pay us up front" I'm pretty sure there'd be total outrage, and a pitchforks and torch mob would be headed to the EA offices. Word it slightly differently though and people call it "the most pro-consumer thing EA has ever done".
 
Way to show you anti-EA bias straight away OP...

No, EA Access will not have had a negative impact on game sales. The meme-ification of the facial animations and other bugs is going to hurt it, but that is not due to the EA Access service.

To be honest, if the recent months have taught me anything it's to totally disregard the neagtivity bandwagon for most games, and assess it for myself. If I'd listened solely to GAF, or some other online sources I'd have missed out on some of my favourite games.

Anyway, whichever way you cut it, EA Access is good for the consumer.
 
I think Mafia 3 proved how much review scores impact the sales of a game...not much if at all.

I assume that many people who pre-ordered Mass Effecdt didn't cancel their pre-orders due to early access or lack of universal acclaim. I think ultimately, the sales of Andromeda will come down to how big of a marketing push they will give it in the general public, and if they can make the game look interesting in general.

Overall, I think the biggest potential impact to Andromeda's sales is the fact that it's a a futuristic space game. Not sure how popular that setting is in the current generation. The setting didn't help Call of Duty much.
 
no one seems to want to discuss what ea will do in the future

EA will continue to put their games on the service they hope one day will turn into the Netflix of video games. The only mistake EA has made with EA Access has been not allowing a 10 hour trial of Titanfall 2. The game would have sold a hell of a lot better then it has.
 
With all the negativity surrounding this game, it makes me want to purchase the competing sweeping Sci Fi Space based RPG's like Mass Effect 1-3 and Mass Effect Andromeda 2 when it comes out in 2021.
 
]So based on reviews and player impressions, Mass Effect Andromeda seems to be a bit of a dud. It seems to me as if Bioware/EA was aware of this fact and wanted to cover it by employing the Fallout 4 launch strategy: give almost no information pre-launch so that pre-orders and pre-release hype give you good sales before people realize that your game isnÂ’t great.[/B] It is a bit shitty and anti-consumer, but it does give nice financial numbers for the closest financial report, and may give any executives involved a nice little bonus. It may do long-term damage to the brand, but I guess gamers are sheep with the memory of a goldfish, and four years from now you will probably have moved on in your career anyway, so notmyproblem.jpg

But in this particular case, this approach seems to have backfired. See, EA has gone all-in on their EA/Origin access service where they want you to pay a subscription fee every month to access their back library of mediocre games. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, and itÂ’s probably really good value if you like their games, but for whatever reason it seems the people in charge of the service thought they needed something more to increase the perceived value of the service. The solution they came up with was the preview program where they delay all of their games for everyone who is not a subscriber, which is a bit anti-consumer, but I guess it brings in the dough, so itÂ’s all good from their perspective. Also, if your game is good, it can help increase the hype, see Battlefield 1. But not in this case apparently. Impressions from the EA early access period were really bad and quickly took the wind out of the sales of the pre-release hype. Normally, a AAA game getting so many reviews below 8, would lead to a lot of angry comments from fans who havenÂ’t yet played the game. But not this time, when everyone had already seen the game for what it was.

So it seems EA wanting to combine two anti-consumer practices at once (hide your game from consumers before launch and hold back games for non-subscribers for a week) backfired badly. I guess the conclusion to draw is that you need to choose one anti-consumer strategy to employ at a time. Seems like in trying to do both they bit off a bit more than they could chew.

For clarity: I'm talking about how being on Early Access may have affected this game and the Mass Effect IP going forward, not about how EA/Origin Access subscription numbers may have been temporarily affected

So how do you think EA will react to this to prevent similar events in the future? Will they start polishing their games properly before release? Or perhaps revamp the Early Access program to prevent stuff like this from happening again? Double down on pre-order incentives? What do you think?

lolwut

This game has gotten a ton of pre-release coverage. IGN had a new thing to preview everyday,
 
1) Online impressions are a poor gauge for mainstream popularity

2) EA is making money hand over fist on the early access program, and it's doubtful that fraction of users on one platform will overwhelm their marketing efforts

3) Demos and closed betas have been a calculated risk for years in the console space. Unless there is something gamebreaking that's in the final shipped copies, it's not going to significantly change the outlook

4) People paying more money for more features isn't anti consumer. It's like textbook capitalism



Amazon is a consistently poor metric for judging retail sales.

Agreed. Look at Destiny. It was very successful with the same sort of tactics and reception.
 
EA Access was the best thing to come out of this generation.
I've played so many games early and gotten so many games for free, totally worth it.

I got to play 10 hours of a game I didn't even have to pay for, now I know I will buy said game later today.
 
EA Access was the best thing to come out of this generation.
I've played so many games early and gotten so many games for free, totally worth it.

I got to play 10 hours of a game I didn't even have to pay for, now I know I will buy said game later today.

There are no free games and you loss any dlc you buy if you stop your subscription
 
There are no free games and you loss any dlc you buy if you stop your subscription

This isn't true. Sure, you may not be able to access the DLC unless you buy the game or resubscribe, but that's not really any different to buying DLC for a physical game you later sell.
 
I find it interesting people find the demo aspect of EA Access to be "pro-consumer" at all.

If it was worded as "We'll delay all games for those who don't pay us up front" I'm pretty sure there'd be total outrage, and a pitchforks and torch mob would be headed to the EA offices. Word it slightly differently though and people call it "the most pro-consumer thing EA has ever done".

Making demos aren't cheap and most people dont even do it anymore. I'm not sure if I would even call a trial a demo but it did take someone man hours to survey the game and decide what the cut off points were then QA the game to make sure the whole script isn't there in a text file.

I wouldn't call access pro consumer but it's definitely not anticonsumer either. They're investing money in something and want some sort of return out of it. It's just a gated service like gas at Costco.
 
We don't, and won't, have access to the metrics that let us know unfortunately. EA will in 2-6 weeks:

- how many pre orders of ME:A were there, how many got cancelled in the 7 days before release
- what was the bump in EA/Origin access in new subs
- how many of these new subs STAYED past a month (huge positive for EA)
- how many people who did a new origin/access sub ended up buying ME:A, how many did not
- what were sales projections for ME:A in the first 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days. How did reality line up?


Don't forget they have another game to compare metrics to: Titanfall 2. While obviously that launch was troubled for other reasons, that game did NOT have a trial period in Access (Battlefield 1 DID) so they can slice and dice up the data from 3 different recent games and make some pretty good conclusions on the net impact.

and unfortunately none of us will have access to any of that data and will have no idea.
 
With all the negativity surrounding this game, it makes me want to purchase the competing sweeping Sci Fi Space based RPG's like Mass Effect 1-3 and Mass Effect Andromeda 2 when it comes out in 2021.

Ugh, I hope it doesn't really take that long lol. Actually, I wonder if BioWare is now going to try and put another, more polished Mass Effect game on the front burner to rehab the series' rep. Rather than let it lie fallow for another 4-5 years.
 
Agreed on this being too early. Besides, 75 meta is perfectly acceptable for a BBB collecting RPG from a niche Japanese publishing house like Nippon ichi.

75 meta happens in part because reviewers will review the game's hype as much as the game itself. Little hyped, quirky games from publishers with little leverage over review outlets get scored lower than big games from publishers that can crush you if they aren't happy. Reviewers are gamers too, and often buy into a marketing campaign.

For a game like MAA to get a 75 is partly reviewers having an opportunity to demonstrate their legitimacy to their audience, and partly to stay in line with public perception with less risk of publisher backlash.
 
Do enough people subscribe to EA Access for it to have this much of an effect?

I mean, I was probably going to hold off on ME anyway because of Zelda and Horizon, but this seems like a bit of a reach.
 
Anecdotally - everyone I know IRL who was thinking about or going to buy the game - myself included is now waiting for deep discount/key bundle or are skipping it. I think it will sell well to those who either aren't in the loop or simply just don't care/have to play a new game all the time or are rabid Mass Effect fans. To each their own...whatever works.

I imagine sales will be decent regardless. Definitely not where they would have been if they had done the whole release day review embargo surprise.
 
how about this OP: I preordered the game because I was looking forward to it. I have seen the criticisms of the game but, because I am a fan, am going to play the fucking game regardless because I have been looking forward to it for 5 years. I will form my own opinion of the game when I finish playing it.

It's also day one.
 
Let's wait and see how much it sells first. We have no indications about anything. Personally I'm waiting to buy it, but it could very well have a long life span.
 
Time will tell. It defintely reduced purchases from the diehards on sites like this based on the trial impression thread etc.

Hard to say how much of a dent that will make in sells to the average gamer. A few people posted 20-30 deep lines of people picking up the game at their store last night, so it will be interesting to see 1) how it sells at launch and 2) how general word of mouth affects sales going forward.
 
Regardless of how this game fares, I will tell you this much. I am never going to allow myself to be swept up by negative internet meme-fests surrounding a game again. Let's just say that I am glad that I kept an open mind and stuck with my pre-order.
Yeah, same. The game certainly has some really low lows when it comes to some of the banter and facial animation, but as a whole package it's really coming together for me in an interesting way. I'm having a lot of fun with it, to the point where feel like I'm playing a completely different game from other people sometimes.
 
Regardless of how this game fares, I will tell you this much. I am never going to allow myself to be swept up by negative internet meme-fests surrounding a game again. Let's just say that I am glad that I kept an open mind and stuck with my pre-order.
Yep I've been saying this since this all started. I've been enjoying myself with the game despite its flaws (and the flaws are glaring at times).

I can tell most people went in with their preconceived notions, laughed at some funny animations, and then wrote the game off. Oh well
 
Regardless of how this game fares, I will tell you this much. I am never going to allow myself to be swept up by negative internet meme-fests surrounding a game again. Let's just say that I am glad that I kept an open mind and stuck with my pre-order.
This. I don't understand the witch hunt that popped up against this game. Sure, it has some janky animations. But name a BioWare game that hasn't had janky animations. I don't understand why certain people have a vested interest in this game failing.

To paint the game bad based on conversation facial animation is silly. The vast majority of the game spent exploring and in combat is fantastic, and the facial animations are a literal non-factor in those instances.
 
I subscribed to EA vault just to try it and I ending up buying it, it's format is better suited to open worlds than DA:I, which put me on the fence to buy the game.

Ghost recon was another game I bought on the back of Beta just for single player. I never take much stock of reviews, I would rather use my own judgement. A game could be the best thing since slice bread, but ifs style/setting does not appeal to meI I generally won't bother with it.
 
That's basically all this was about. Anti EA and EA access, with a bunch of fluff added to try and mask it. A bitter Sony fanboy likely.

This is ridiculous. The anti-consumer point comes from the game being done and ready to play by everyone, as long as you pay a subscription fee. EA is no stranger to selling access to a game days before it's launch, and it basically just marketing hype serving to get more money out of people. Obviously it's up to each person to decide if they want this or not, but the fact is they can weasel an extra $10 or $20 out of people because they have an arbitrary launch date for the physical version.
 
Regardless of how this game fares, I will tell you this much. I am never going to allow myself to be swept up by negative internet meme-fests surrounding a game again. Let's just say that I am glad that I kept an open mind and stuck with my pre-order.

How much goodwill did the Mass Effect name have with you?
 
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