I’ll edit the article itself in a little while, but a quick update:

Madballs released with an unannounced but very welcome price change to 800 points, PREVIOUSLY 1200. I’m not very far in this game yet but I do like what I see, and will be reviewing it very soon.

Also, an unannounced game appeared today: Tour de France 2009, at 800 points. This came completely out of nowhere, and I have no info on it just yet beyond the insultingly obvious; "It’s a game about bike racing. Possibly in France!"

I have never played a Battlefield game before this X-Box live edition. I downloaded the 1943 demo out of curiosity, and loved it. I downloaded the full game and have never had a problem with the gameplay or logging on. Furthermore, if the game is good, gamers such as myself tend to overlook these issues...

p.s. if you look up corporate greed in the dictionary there is a picture of EA.

Hey, thanks for dropping by to comment. You’re right, by most accounts they have fixed BF1943’s online play by now and it apparently works fine. I’m told it was generally sorted out within ten days of the release, give or take a few.

Personally, I have yet to touch it even with the fixes, though this is for reasons not related to the actual game play. I am not fond of having to submit to a seperate End User License Agreement for EA games when I’ve already agreed to one for the system and service itself. I know why this is done, it’s on EA’s own servers. My problem with that is EA operates on a basis where they plan for the games they sell to become obsolete in short order, so they can sell you next year’s edition when they yank online play for this year’s. I’m not fond of that at all.

It is indeed corporate greed, as you mentioned. Obviously EA (or any publisher) needs to make money, but there’s a difference between making honest money, and intentionally setting out to milk your target audience. EA definitely does the latter, as do a few other companies I can think of. At any rate, thanks again for commenting on the article; I write these in the hopes of triggering some debate and discussion with readers like you!

Ya, I hear what your saying Jim. I don’t mean to turn your XBLA commentary into a EA haters club rant, but... when they bought the rights to be the only game maker of the NFL franchise, it was indeed a sad day for me. Sorry NFL 2K6, it just wasn’t meant to be... and it just cemented my hatred for them. I havent played a Madden game since the Genesis days, and from what I hear from my friends and reading reviews, I ain’t missing much!  It’s hard to not buy a good game, even if has the EA name on it ( NHL 09, Rock Band 2). I actually had to sit and ponder for a second if I wanted to even download BF1943, just for the fact that they made it.  I hate myself for giving more money to this "cash cow", but a good game is a good game, and I don’t want to miss out.

Why doesn’t EA just release a home console, that way they could just corner the market on everything, and slowly kill the home video game market. I’m being extreme, but there really isn’t much left out there that they haven’t dipped their hands into (or bought out) yet. Anyone for another "ho-hum" edition of Madden? Count me out!

Talk about milking your audience, how about 800 microsoft points for all these map packs they keep releasing (Halo 3, COD World at War)? These should all be free, as a reward to all who paid $60 for their game, don’t ya think?

I’m not really seeing the problem with your ’rant.’ EA does a lot of things that I find questionable at best or unacceptable at worst, and they really should be brought to light; if nothing else then as a consumer’s rights/interests matter. The Madden/NFL exclusive license was probably the most blatant step they’ve taken in being the ’evil empire’, but they have kept at it since then. You mentioned Microsoft Points, and it’s pretty common for the Xbox Live Gold Member "Deal of the Week" to instead just be a one-week discount for add-on packs to an EA game that is going to be obsolete in a few months... primarily because EA is releasing the next edition in that game’s series in that time frame.

I imagine you were mostly being silly about EA making their own system, though I’ll add to that with: "Sure thing. They’ll probably have a credit card reader built right into it." The sad part is that the EA I knew from the Genesis days was a genuinely creative company; I loved stuff like Mutant League Football! If they somehow were to make a system, accompanied by a return to their old behavior, I’d... probably be interested, I admit.

As for map packs (and similar DLC packs and so forth) being free... I can see two different approaches on this. The obvious one is that it did take some time and effort to create and playtest it to make sure there are no major bugs, plus someone has to pay for the bandwidth to get it distributed. So long as the content is genuinely good, I have no issue with forking over a few dollars to extend my game’s ’life span.’

On the other hand, there’s Valve’s approach, where they see it as a form of advertising and good-will. I don’t have the exact quotes or sources in front of me, but I seem to recall something to the effect of a Valve employee noting that their sales of Team Fortress 2 (for PC, at least) spike every time they release a class update. To them, it’s apparently a matter of investing in their own product in order to get even more profit, while still generating good will with the customer/end user. I’d certainly say I prefer this option, but I can’t fault charging companies for add-ons if they’re genuinely good enough.