EA Talks SimCity Launch, Sims 4 Being Offline, Staff Departures, etc.

[macscfan 117]

Venturebeat: EA exec Frank Gibeau: Betting on next-gen consoles, mobile, and doing right by consumers (interview)

 

Frank Gibeau is the president of EA Labels, which is over Maxis.   I'm trying not to quote the whole thing since that's wrong and it's mostly not about SimCity, but here are some relevant quotes:

 

 

 

GamesBeat:  I talked to Ocean Quigley.... He said that after his third SimCity-related game, he felt like he had to step outside Will Wright’s shadow and do something different.

 

Gibeau: That was a happy parting. He’s great. At some point in your career, you look for a diversity of challenges. You want to try different things. He had a tremendous career at Electronic Arts and built a lot of games for us. He wants to try something different, and good on him to go do that.

 

 

GamesBeat: What did you take away from the server problems that hurt the launch of SimCity?

 

Gibeau: In retrospect, our biggest takeaway is that we are lucky that SimCity has an enormous number of loyal fans. That first week after launch was really rough — an experience nobody wants to live through again.

 

Since then, we’ve sold more than 2 million units, and the number of people logging in and playing is holding steady. SimCity is a success. However, underestimating demand in the first month was a major miss. We hope that the game and the service we’ve provided since then meets the fans’ high standards.

 

 

 

GamesBeat: EA got voted the Worst Company in America? How do you respond to that and try to change that perception, if it is indeed a widely held opinion?

 

Gibeau: We take it very seriously and want to see it change.

 

In the last few months, we have started making changes to the business practices that gamers clearly don’t like....We listened to the feedback on SimCity and decided that The Sims 4 would be built as a single-player, offline experience.

 

  If I were a Sims fan, I would be happy that they learned from SimCity and are offering an offline experience. 

 

Even though in the interview he said it wasn't an excuse (that AAA titles have rough online launches these days), it definitely felt like an excuse as a SC fan.

 

My thing is, they say they've learned from SC and are applying it to their upcoming games, but why not apply it to the current SC?  I know about the survey and that they may be considering some things that would make us happy.

 

I'm weird though, I think SC could still be salvaged and become another long-lasting franchise like Sims 3 (as in generating a lot of ongoing revenue for EA, causing them to keep on developing things for SC).

[fatbuster 44]

I think the one thing you can take away from this is that EA stills sees this game as a (financial) success. This means that the game should at least continue to receive patches and new content. Some of the smaller issues could still be fixed, but it remains to be seen if the larger ones (city size, Sim Complexity & Offline Mode) will be also addressed. It will be interesting to see the state of the game a year from now.

[specializedguy 193]

I think the one thing you can take away from this is that EA stills sees this game as a (financial) success. This means that the game should at least continue to receive patches and new content. 

 

Agreed!

[macscfan 117]

I think the one thing you can take away from this is that EA stills sees this game as a (financial) success.

 

Agree with that!  And I do think the state of the game next year will be interesting to see.  It'll show whether they want SC to become a franchise like the Sims, or whether they have thrown their hands up and moved on to other games.

[CaptCity 4,666]

Moved here from SC13 forum since the original topic has a more general tone.

[LuckyMoose 1]

GamesBeat: EA got voted the Worst Company in America? How do you respond to that and try to change that perception, if it is indeed a widely held opinion?

 

We listened to the feedback on SimCity and decided that The Sims 4 would be built as a single-player, offline experience.

 

 Something kind of understated about describing the mutual, angry outrage, as "feedback". Just as damn well lol.

[simcity4deluxe 95]

I think the problem isn't that the game is online or offline if given the choice in a game, it's the fact that EA can't make a game that's good with multiplayer capabilities that isn't an fps anymore.  Actually, I don't think they've ever made a multiplayer game outside the fps genre that's good other than the older need for speed's cause I remember them releasing a sims online for sims 1 which failed.