Andrew Wilson's remarks about Anthem (May 8th)

Pretty much what I would expect from Andrew Wilson talking to EA's investors and it seems to be a lot of marketing for investors. The story comment again is what I was expecting, but I am pretty sure there are going to be people that will find fault or twist what is being said to have some level of misdirection.

I enjoyed the story content of The Old Republic and thought BioWare did a good job at release with that except for the lack of end game content. Anthem is seemingly to be the same approach, but going for the new cash cow in the looter-shooter instead of MMOs.

Edit: Just to note, I am probably going to be paying more attention to the investor's call which should have a transcript posted in a day or two.  I find there is more interesting information in those most of the time instead of just prepared statements.  In the last one we found out at least in investor speak they were okay with how Andromeda did and talking about how they consider the games performance was to be "very well" and that consider player engagement to be "really strong".

What makes you think the recent games were not successful? This game started right after Mass Effect 3 and the industry speculation was that it was BioWare's most successful selling game at 6 million copies sold and Inquisition has BioWare's best launch ever.  Just because people on Reddit or YouTube are claiming that Andromeda {edit} failed {/edit} doesn't mean it was a disaster either, it might not have met that threshold that was mentioned elsewhere doesn't mean it wasn't successful for EA either.

They aren't try any harder then any other BioWare release, notice how they were also doing the same level of sell for Battlefield as well and that game doesn't need to have the upsale either.  Its just how it works to try and get people interested in EA's stocks to increase stock prices so they can make everyone more money.

"to the epic and beautiful environment that constantly evolves around players."
What does that even mean? An evolving environment? Unless there is some sort of procedural generation involved, I call bs.

"we will open new ways for fans to join the community and play early, enabling us to shape and refine the game with their input and feedback."
They're going to release with loads of bugs. Again.
(Hopefully not. People work hard on making these games. Sad that this is the first thought that popped into my head when I saw this, though.)

"Creativity is the central strand of everything we do at EA. Every experience begins with creating something new and unexpected."
Like the way MEA copied so much of the OT?
(Again, first thought. Not looking to start a fight.)

Only thing to take seriously from this is the release timeframe. Everything else is just salesmanship.

There's certainly a dose of salesmanship here.

Based on prior comments from Jonathan Warner about a beta, I'm reading the 'early access' comments as just that.

Not "EA/Origin Access" and not an 'Unfinished' Early Access game to be launched in March and finished 'mañana"...

Hope I'm right.

www.ign.com//articles/2018/05/09/ea-made-51-billion-in-revenue-for-2018-anthem-still-on-track-for-2019-release

Same stuff as In the title?

Doesn't sound good for the SP. Either way, don't really care, just waiting to see what happens with DA4.

Bring on the next Dragon Age.

Because 'Single-Player' is expected to be just playing the game 'without friends', it should be entirely the opposite of 'tacked on' because it's still playing the same game.
How the absence of other players impacts difficulty, mechanics and/or plotting remains to be seen.

And there's clearly still a demand for solo-only experience that isn't just tacked-on.

Anthem is looking less and less likely to provide that.

For myself, when I want a co-operative social experience, I go to tabletop games.

Apparently, people don't like 'bread and butter' as much as they used to...

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Well, nothing about RPG, stories and characters.

Ea's current game creative formula is live-service shooters.   Yep, players will be excited to play the same game for years to come.
As to ".. new ways to interact with the worlds we create in games like Anthem...", I take it he means microtransactions.

It appears to be a winning formula, if Ubisoft has anything to say about it ( more )

To me it simply means waiting six or so months and then make a decision. Any season pass is an automatic "NEXT!". As to the corp speak, I expected nothing less.