3. EA + Star Wars = The Most Money-Hungry Deal Ever
The Stars Wars/Battlefield hybrid game from EA was always going to be a filthy cash-in. It does, after all, entail Star Wars, Battlefield and EA. Smash those three things together into a well-presented but otherwise insubstantial video game, and you have yourself a goldmine. True to their approach with the Battlefield series, EA put the base Battlefront game up for a price of $60, and is also offering a Season Pass for $50, which will be made up of four DLC packs with four maps in them each. So that's a total of $110 for the 'full package'. Now, you can question EA's dodgy DLC practices, but for better or worse they've been going on for a while, so nothing new or fascinating there. What's shocking, however, is the lack of content in the base game. While EA claims a half-decent twelve maps in the standard version, these are set across four planets, with each map on the same planet essentially being a cordoned-off area of a larger one. EA cut some big corners on the map variety (and weapon variety, and gameplay depth, the list goes on), essentially forcing people into buying the season pass to get a satisfactory amount of content. With Battlefront, EA's long-questionable approach to offering players a decent amount of content at the point of entry to a game has reached new lows. Unfortunately, the fact that it's a Star Wars game means that the vulnerable, frenzied fanboys will cough up the money in an instant, thereby allowing this unsavoury cycle to continue.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.