Is EA Games trying get out of the PC Gaming industry? Why do you ask? Well, EA Games have made some very questionable moves over the last year that makes me ask this question.
For the last…hmmm . . . five years or so I have been a faithful member of the Madden Football nation and an avid PC Gamer. Every year, I have religiously bought the newest addition of Madden Football by EA Sports for the PC…all except this year. 
You see EA Sports has decided not to produce a PC version of their highly popular and profitably franchise this year. This move was confirmed from a post on a blog written by Per Peter Moore at EA Sports, “the PC platform presents serious business challenges to us in the sports category.”
To me this decision sounds a bit fishy…why would EA Sports not produce a 2009 version for the PC during the 20th anniversary of the Madden Football franchise? With an event of the nature, wouldn’t EA Sports recuperate their development costs, marketing, and etc? I think there is another underlying issue at hand…or a as Marcellus stated in Hamlet Act 1 scene IV “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
This move is just one of an example of EA Games/Sports alienating the PC gamer and market. The other is with the new release of Spores, Mass Effect, and Red Alert 3.
These three new games are using a copy protection called SecurRom. What is SecurRom? This protection limits how many installs of the game a person can place on a PC. For instance, Spore you get three installs. If you system crashes, you upgrade your PC, or run into a problem that requires you to uninstall the game you might screwed if it happens more than three times.
Something seems wrong here. Aren’t companies supposed to be consumer friendly? Yes, I know that EA Games is trying to protect their intellectual property, but there is a fine line between protecting their property and servicing the consumer. In this case the consumer is the one losing out which in turn will hurt EA Games in the long run and quite possible their bottom line. Haven’t they learned anything from the RIAA?
Is this a way for EA Games to enhance their security by limited the how many copies or is this a way to manipulate the market by making consumers buy multiple copies of the same product in order to play the game after multiple installs later? Who knows…but from a consumer perspective this is just dirty pool.
2 responses so far ↓
Rachel // September 29, 2008 at 8:57 am |
That’s nice!! I like EA games… Thanks for the information about SecurRom.
Kym // July 10, 2009 at 4:40 pm |
I have seen this happening with alot games company’s seem to one motive, GREED, i think alot companys like EA and Valve are being invaded by the movie industy. its seem give how PC gaming seems to be taking to back seat to Consoles. now the next move is make us pay for Downloadable content. it seems that companys like Microsoft and EA, are seeing that mmo’s can charge for games monthly, i expect we soon see moves to that with all games. instead of buying a game outright, you be buying the right to play the game for certain period of time. this crap news for the gamer. but the Gaming industry and its greed is not gaming anymore.
cloud type games are the future. games where you only have the client on PC, and game is hosted else where. this to kill Piracy and our wallets. get ready for 2010, the year the gaming died.