Sustained Imagery

At the end of last week, rumours began circulating around the internet that EA had cancelled the Need for Speed racing series. After lacklustre sales and reviews (65 on Metacritic) of the most recent game, Undercover, EA had apparently finally realised that particularly in the current economic situation, the public aren’t willing to spend £40 on a game that has only a small list of enhancements over its precursor every year, and due to the short development time allocated to the annual refreshes, reviewers were ripping into uninspiring and buggy games.

EA have since denied these rumours, and claim that the series will continue, but the rumour could very easily have been an official press release. Undercover has been slated across the board, and although it is seen as a step up from last year’s horrendous ProStreet, it just shows a lack of real progression in the series, a problem that is currently affecting all of EA’s annually updated properties, such as the Sports games. I’m not saying that these games should move to a Burnout-inspired business model – supporting a game long after release, and putting in a decent-length development period. But clearly something does need to be done, as these solid sales bases are what have supported the company’s recent attempts with new intellectual property, such as Dead Space and Mirrors Edge.

My solution lies in a platform that already exists, and a concept that has already been tried. A couple of years back, Tomb Raider: Anniversary was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace as DLC for those who owned the Tomb Raider: Legend disk. The download contained the enhancements made to the Legend engine for the sequel, as well as the actual game content. Although obviously this would not be possible for sequels where the engine has been significantly reworked, but for franchises such as FIFA or NBA where quite minor tweaks make up the yearly releases, a downloadable version would make sense, and if appropriately priced (say £20) it might even increase sales. I’m not saying that the downloads would replace the disk outright, but right now, EAs annual updates simply are not selling as well as they used to at retail, as the public does not see the value in buying a barely enhanced game for full price every year. But will EA take the risk, in order to reap the rewards later?