Battlefield Premium hits 800,000 registered players
Only two weeks in, EA's premium FPS service has almost reached a million users
EA's Battlefield Premium service for Battlefield 3 has enlisted more than 800,000 users since its launch two weeks ago. The service offers discounts and early access on the game's expansions, including the recently-released Close Quarters. EA Games Label executive vice president Patrick Soderlund told USA Today that the initial response to the service has pleased the publisher.
"We are very pleased with the performance so far. We're actually only two weeks into it, so it's a little early to tell how this is going to pay off," said Soderlund. "It certainly it looks very promising right now."
Soderlund also expects EA to launch more original properties down the line, as it did with Dead Space and Mirror's Edge for this console generation.
"If we think we can live off of our existing brands and that only, I think it will not only be costly, but a short-lived mistake," he said. "I still think there's a lot of creative juice in brands like Battlefield and Need For Speed and a bunch of our franchises, but I also do think there's a lot of room for new intellectual properties. We are investing in that today, and you will see new IPs from EA and the Games label in the future."
I don't disagree with the idea of a premium service, however, as a non-premium battlfield player I cannot help but think EA are goign about this wrong.
Firstly anyone who buys BF3 premium will be happy with what they get, it is those of us who have not bought it that are being penalised, presumably as a means of encouraging us to go out and buy premium. Some things which come to mind are:
- Premium only servers
- No options to exclude premium players from normal servers (for a fair fight)
- Queue jumping for premium players
- Anyone who purchased the BF3 limited edition and wants Premium is effectively being forced to buy Back to Karkand twice
I just don't think it is a clever stratagy to prenalise the longest playing, most loyal players simply because they do not want to participate in the premium service. How long until premium players get more health and ammo than non-premium players??
I will probably have to get premium eventually when there are more premium players than non-premium. It feels like they are milking the franchise rather than moving it in a positive direction. Especially since close quarters 'could' have been an amazing battlefield experience, but instead feels like a CoD clone....or quake.
Edited 4 times. Last edit by Alex O'Dwyer on 1st July 2012 11:22am
Posted:10 months ago