Nobody like EA. Everyone likes Nintendo. Well except a large portion of Nintendo fans. But most people like Nintendo. Nintendo is so popular and immune to criticism that the corporate overlords at the most disliked company in the games industry thought that all they had to do for some good PR was copy Nintendo. It failed spectacularly.
EA started small. First they announced that they would start adding some of their classic games from the 90s onto EA Play. Every month they would add a handful of games. Except all of the games were obscure titles no one had heard of. So despite some of them being legitimately fun games, people rebelled because NHL 94 wasn’t on there. And each time they didn’t add it, the people got angrier.
After seeing people still weren’t happy them, EA revealed their next Nintendo style trick. They were going to release a collection of the first 3 SSX games. They games would be available on one disc in a collection titled SSXXX. The games would feature zero improvements or updates and the collection would retail for $69.99 USD and be available to purchase for a 4 month window before being discontinued.
Gamers immediately called them out on their anti-consumer business practices. Many even stated that SSX Tricky played and looked better through Xbox backwards compatibility than it did in the collection. Gamers were also not happy that the collection was being sold for full price when they could buy all 3 games by themselves for less than that and get the exact same experience. Once again, EA was the worst.
Finally, EA brought out the Hail Mary. They announced an HD remaster of one of their best but most misunderstood titles. EA announced they would be remastering Dragon Age 2 for modern consoles. The remaster dubbed Dragon Age 2 HD Deluxe would feature redone graphics, new 4K resolution and 60fps. They also announced that the game would address everyone’s biggest criticism of the game. The fact that Hawk could only be a human.
In the original release, the biggest problem fans had of Dragon Age 2 was that in character Hawk could only be a human where as in it’s predecessor, you could choose between a variety of races. In the HD Deluxe version, EA said that they added the ability to choose different races to play as as it would affect how characters interacted with you. This feature would be available to any players that purchased the $25 dollar Hawk collectible statue, of which only 100,000 were produced.
Needless to say that the backlash came fast and it came furious. Once again EA was labeled as the worst company in gaming for their anti-consumer practices. No one was happy at the notion of having a feature which improves upon the original game’s criticisms locked behind a collectible. Gamers unanimously ridiculed EA for their money hungry practices.
Everyone hates EA. And even in their efforts to copy the most lovable, completely wholesome company in gaming, Nintendo, who are incapable of ever doing anything scummy, they failed spectacularly and only made people hate them more. Some things never change.
Rongo 