Today
on Headline RePLAY: EA is going to be a 100% digital company, a new direction
for the Super Smash Bros. series and members of the European Union can resell
used downloaded games.
EA
Labels boss Frank Gibeau is moving from prediction to absolute certainty: the
publisher is going to be a 100% digital company.
“It’s
in the near future. It’s coming,” Gibeau told GamesIndustry International. “We
have a clear line of sight on it and we’re excited about it. Retail is a great
channel for us. We have great relationships with our partners there. At the
same time, the ultimate relationship is the connection that we have with the
gamer.
“If
the gamer wants to get the game through a digital download and that’s the best
way for them to get it, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “It has a lot
of enhancements for our business. It allows us to keep more that we make. It
allows us to do some really interesting things from a service level standpoint;
we can be a lot more personalized with what we’re doing. “
This
doesn’t mean that EA is throwing brick-and-mortar stores like GameStop under
the bus, however.
“But
if customers want to buy a game in retail, they can do that too,” Gibeau
clarified. “We’ll continue to deliver games in whatever media formats make
sense and as one ebbs and one starts to flow, we’ll go in that direction. For
us, the fastest growing segment of our business is clearly digital and clearly
digital services and ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future…
“We’re
going to be a 100% digital company, period. It’s going to be there some day. It’s
inevitable.”
|Source:
GamesIndustry International
Super Smash Bros. Brawl contained a mother
lode of new content ranging from new characters, an exhaustive cast of multiplayer
options to a campaign-based “Adventure Mode.” Fans expecting more in its 3DS and Wii U
iteration may be in for some disappointment, as the director of franchise says
that the series is in for a new “change of direction.”
“It
isn’t a matter of ‘if the next game has 50 characters, that’ll be enough.’
There is a certain charm to games that have huge casts of playable characters,
but they tend to have issues with game balance and it becomes very difficult to
fine-tune each character and have them all feel distinctive…” director Masahiro
Sakurai told Nintendo Power.
“In
terms of quantity, we’ve probably already reached the limit of what’s feasible.
I think a change of direction may be what’s needed.”
|Source:
Nintendo Everything
Publishers
cannot stop consumers from reselling downloaded games, the Court of Justice of
the European Union ruled.
“An
author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licenses allowing the
use of his programs downloaded from the internet,” the ruling stated.
According
to the Court, customers in the EU are free to sell their downloaded games,
regardless of what End User License Agreement has been signed.
“Therefore,
even if the license agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can
no longer oppose the resale of that copy.”
The decision
suggests that a license-holder can even download from the publisher’s website as
a “lawful acquirer.”
“Therefore
the new acquirer of the user license, such as customer of UsedSoft, as a lawful
acquirer of the corrected and updated copy of the computer program concerned,
download that copy from the copyright holder’s website.
|Source:
Eurogamer
