Electronic Arts Wants to Take Even More of Your Money
by Dan Landis on January 22, 2008 at 12:48 am
After seeing the huge sales of downloadable songs for Guitar Hero III and their very own Rock Band, Electronic Arts had this fantastic idea - offer downloadable soundtracks for all of their games. Read on for why we think this is tremendously stupid.
Guitar Hero III has sold over 5 million songs, while Rock Band fans have downloaded more that 2.5 million. Considering these tracks are priced anywhere from one to two dollars, that adds up to a lot of money, especially for not being a physical product.
EA wants to take the assumed consumer demand for downloadable songs and apply it to their other franchises. No offense to anyone working for EA or to EA in general, but that’s fucking ridiculous.
EA doesn’t seem to realize that people are downloading these songs for Rock Band because the songs themselves are the game. People aren’t getting these songs just to relax and listen to. No one is going to pay a few bucks to hear different songs on the menus while playing Madden.
I would assume that if they offer a new downloadable soundtrack for Madden, for example, that the songs would only be available while playing Madden. EA could, however, have everything slapped together and have one large depository for music in their games — expand the “EA Trax” feature across all of their games.
All of that sounds okay on the surface, maybe, unless you know how to use your console properly and can navigate your way around a computer. I’m not completely savvy when it comes to the PS3’s media features, but the Xbox 360 lets you stream music stored on your hard drive, your computer, or a portable device (even a PSP) while you are playing a game. You can effectively replace any soundtrack to any 360 game with any music that you want.
So tell me, EA, why in the hell would anyone pay the same amount of money to download a song to use exclusively with your games as they would to download a song from something like iTunes and use it anywhere they want? They wouldn’t. That was a rhetorical question.
EA hopes that you just don’t know about these console features so that you easily fall victim to their bullshit. Unfortunately for the world, plenty of people probably will download EA’s soundtracks. NPD surveys suggest that half of PS3 owners and only 30% of 360 owners even know that their consoles are capable of hi-def graphics.
EA reads stats like this and assumes (maybe correctly) that you don’t know what you’re doing. Please don’t be one of those people, and help spread the word. Together we can fight the oppression.
Sorry, EA, but I’m going to have to hit the button on this one.
Source: Reuters
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on January 22, 2008 5:59 am
I wouldn’t pay for music to begin with, but paying EA for soundtracks? What the hell?
on January 22, 2008 4:46 pm
I heard in the next Tiger Woods you’ll be able to buy the achievements for 1 ms point a piece… I guess all that money that went into the Rock Band guitar has to be made up somewhere. I mean, that was a quality piece of hardware right there, only had to send it in three times before I got one that worked. Nice to know that our money is being put to good use.
Really though, good thing they have time to work on this instead of putting a net behind the goal posts in Madden.
on January 24, 2008 2:12 am
Hahaha I don’t buy any EA games anyways so they’re not getting ANY of my money.
on January 24, 2008 6:30 am
Anyone who cares about the videogame industry shouldn’t buy EA, at least new. If you MUST buy an EA game, buy it used.