Star Wars Battlefront II has gameplay boosts instead of cosmetic microtransactions in order to respect the canon, says EA.
Speaking at this year's Credit Suisse Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen briefly touched on the topic of microtransactions and whether or not anything changed due to the recent Star Wars Battlefront II backslash.
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"We pulled off on the MTX, because the real issue the consumer had was they felt it was a pay-to-win mechanic." said Jorgensen. "The reality is there are different types of players in games. Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time. You want to always balance those two."
Asked about why EA didn't pursue cosmetic-based microtransactions instead of gameplay boosts, Jorgensen blamed Lucasarts' canon policy: "The one thing we're very focused on and they're extremely focused on is not violating the canon of Star Wars", he added. "Darth Vader in white probably doesn't make sense, versus in black. Not to mention you probably don't want Darth Vader in pink. No offense to pink, but I don't think that's right in the canon."
Besides ignoring the myriad of clone and battle droid variations (not to mention the slightly haphazard nature of the Rebel Alliance's equipment), Jorgensen went out of his way to paint Battlefront II in a very positive light.
"The great news is this is one of the best games we've ever built, and we're hearing that from the players who are actually playing the game and engaging in the game.", he said. "The retention day over day is better than we've seen in almost any of our games. The depth of the gameplay is incredible. The size of the game is incredible. And we'll be adding in the next couple weeks, more content than we've ever added in a game before."
The most telling part comes at the end of the speech: "We're not giving up on the notion of MTX," Jorgensen said. "I would say we're certainly not changing our strategy".
Keep in mind, Jorgensen's job is to keep the company reputation afloat and put a positive spin on the worst financial occurances. Business talk aside, if Battlefront was as good as EA wants you to believe, it wouldn't have nearly a hundred thousand people asking Disney to pull the plug on EA's license.
