Last night, EA CEO Andrew Wilson and EA's Chief Financial Officer Stuart Canfield addressed investors following the release of their quarterly financial results. They appeared to be pessimistic about the single-player market and hinted that Dragon Age: The Veilguard would have performed better had it been a live service title.
"Historically, blockbuster storytelling has been the primary way our industry bought beloved IP to the players ... The game's financial performance highlights [the] evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate resources towards our most significant and highest potential opportunities."
We know that Dragon Age was originally intended to have live-service features but was changed to be an entirely single-player title midway through development. I would be surprised if this shift mid-development didn't create issues with the final product of the game. This is a convenient excuse for a company who has repeatedly shown that they want all their games to have live-service features that nickel and dime players at every opportunity.
Image Credit: Polygon
Anyone paying attention would recognize that EA has been chomping at the bit to shove microtransactions wherever they can. Battlefront 2 was infamously full of lootboxes that were so egregious they had to be pulled off the store and the entire game had to be rebalanced because of the pay-to-win nature of the card unlocks.
What will this mean for Mass Effect 5? Bioware has had a rough decade between Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, and now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This continued shift away from single-player games is going to be incredibly hard on a studio that has never done a live-service title before and the Bioware team has been significantly downsized .
Image Credit: Bioware
I think Andrew is blind to what is really happening with Biowares last few titles because he's trying to justify doing what he already wants to do - pack their games full of microtransactions. I don't think that's a winning strategy and will only serve to further hurt their studio that has already been through the ringer.
If they are truly thinking of turning Mass Effect 5 into a live-service title, I really hope they back down. There are already too many live-service titles in the industry competing for players attention, and I don't see this strategy working out for them.
