Your thoughts on EA's current state? (As of May 5th, 2022)

Dear video gamers in the Giant Bomb forums

We're on May 2022, and so far here are my thoughts on this video game publisher's current state, to me, they appear to be so greedy, judging for having so many free-to-play elements for their commercial-released video games such as microtransactions, loot boxes etc. Also, they're ignoring Nintendo Switch as they force the majority of their developers not to make games for that platform.

However, their latest published FPS game: Battlefield 2042 is still receiving heaps of complaints from the community while DICE doesn't seem to do anything to improve it at the moment.

Well, I'm still curious about Codemasters' coming up F1 22 and I'm hoping the publisher won't ruin the game so badly.

They don't really make games for me, not into Apex, not into Battlefield, don't care about sports, don't care about Star Wars.

On the upside they support the occasional neat looking indie game which is nice, hopefully they leave Codemasters to do their thing, the F1 games could use a little more fine tuning and hopefully they won't monetise it to hell, the most interesting thing on their horizon for me is Skate (4), but despite the involvement of some of the people from the original team i wonder if they can recapture the magic, they do seem to be taking their time which is good.

I do need to ask though, where is the next C&C remaster? The response to the first pack was phenomenal are they seriously just going to stop there? Where's Jim Vessella? Let that man continue the dream!!

With the way the publishing world is going, it wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to gear up to sell themselves to Microsoft.

Outside of Respawn’s singleplayer efforts, nothing in their catalog is appealing these days. I used to enjoy Battlefield but none of them have clicked with me post 4. I also used to enjoy most of Bioware’s stuff but I have zero faith in them doing anything interesting ever again based on their track record over the last decade.

TBH the only series from EA I ever mildly cared about was Dragon Age, but after Inquisition I don't have high hopes for the next one.

I like them more than Activision, which isn't saying much.

I used to subscribe to EA Play because I was buying Madden every year and it just made sense to instead spend the extra 30ish/year to also play EA's other releases. But now it feels like there aren't any additional releases from EA and Madden still hasn't gotten the major overhaul that it needs, so I canceled it last year.

Battlefield 2042 is probably the biggest whiff and most mismanaged game I've ever played so that alone bumped them further down the totem pole if that was even possible. Excluding Fallen Order and Squadrons haven't given a shit about anything they've put out in a year or two so it's looking pretty grim. Thank god the Star Wars licence is opening up to other studios now.

Can't say there's much on the horizon that I'm looking forward to, but I did just get into Star Wars Squadrons. It doesn't have a whole lot of content, but it is also light on typical EA bullshit.

If Codemasters officially leaves EA then I'll be happy for that but if they shut it down, then I'm so going to be upset.

Yeah, absolutely!

I wish Star Wars Squadrons have an option to switch it to 3rd person view because I can tell that not everyone can fly so well in 1st person view on whichever gaming platform, unlike Factor 5's Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64 and it's sequels on the Nintendo GameCube, allowing players to use the 3rd person view which makes it more accessible.

I have to imagine they're in a "tough" spot, as tough a spot as having a near monopoly on kinda-simulation sports and their ultimate team mode off shoots can be. And I used to be the weirdo that defending EA against their reputation! But what do they do now? Incremental sports games, some Star Wars IP, a random indie game? I still think they get a little more shit than they deserve - I haven't played them, but Lost in Random seemed well received while Jan had his friends with benefits moment in Knockout City - but it's been wild to see such a huge developer during my teenage and college years - 2002 to 2011 or so - get reduced to...whatever they are now.

Hope springs eternal, which is why I'm always disappointed at the state of BioWare games these days. I mean, I want to believe that they'll show me something inspiring any day now.

I'm into Respawn's single-player stuff. Titanfall 2 remains one of the best FPS campaigns of all time, and they somehow made a game that made me give a shit about a basic-ass male human Jedi character.

I don't really play competetive FPS or sports games anymore so they have had little to offer me for some time now (I did enjoy Jedi: Fallen Order). I don't think they're too concerned with gaining my custom anyway, pretty sure they still make pure bank on microtransactions and casual FIFA / madden players.

They are sitting on some IP I'm interested in but I don't expect they'll ever use it, if they did I don't expect them to do a good job. Say what you will about the burgeoning MS monopoly but they seem to want to establish or develop IP at least and more likely to take creative risks (for now at least, get them through the door then jack up the prices/cut the quality). I'd be happy to see Bioware IPs liberated and actually used in particular.

I'm at the point with EA where I basically only play Respawn games. I love Apex and I just picked up Jedi Fallen Order, but nothing else in their output is appealing at all. They really have been a mess for years. It seems like all of the third part publishers are a mess though with trying to figure out how to navigate the evolving industry.

Remaster need for speed undercover the best Need for speed game ever made

EA is and has been for a while one of the better major 3rd party publishers, I'm really not sure why they take so much heat from gamers all the time. People complain about microtransactions and annual releases but every publisher is doing those, and some are way worse than EA.

I can't actually remember what was the last EA game that I played aside of Apex Legends. They gambled and lost heavily on their "nobody cares about single player games" and a lot of their franchises have missed the mark recently but businesses gotta take risks and I hope that EA can turn it around.

Compared to the likes of Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft and Take2 (I mainly mean the Nba 2k franchise here), if the worst thing you can say about EA is that they released a bunch of bad games, that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things.

The only thing on what I can do on microtransactions is to avoid them as I keep grinding instead.