While the source of this is from an X-Box page, this applies to both the X-Box and PC versions of Titanfall.
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More than a year ago, on March 5th, 2013, Electronic Arts released the highly anticipated SimCity and nobody was able to play it. The servers were immediately overwhelmed and thousands of people all over the country were not able to play the game they spent their hard-earned money on. The game was downloaded onto their computer, their internet was working fine, but EA severely underestimated the popularity of SimCity and their servers were unprepared for the masses. Gamers were :):):):)ed. On March 11th of this year, EA’s newest hype-monster, Titanfall, releases on the Xbox One and PC. Just a shade over a year has passed since the SimCity disaster and EA has to prove that history won’t repeat itself. It had been a decade since the release of 2003’s SimCity 4, so a staggering amount of buildup accompanied the release of SimCity. When it was deemed unplayable, this staggering amount of buildup morphed into an explosive amount of disappointment.
Unfortunately for the game industry, their target audience is technically savvy, vocal, and familiar with the world wide web. Scathing reviews were written, angry phone calls were placed, and forum threads flooded with the hate and inner-rage that players keep pent-up until the moment a publisher botches a video game launch. It wasn’t just a botched launch, though. EA sold players a game that didn’t work, and when players called in to get their money back, EA bluntly refused. Prior to release, if a game was digitally downloaded from Origin and found to be incompatible with a customer’s computer, this game could then be refunded and removed from the customer’s Origin account. On March 5th, this policy changed.
Since the SimCity issues were purely a result of EA’s unready servers and not the incompatibility between the game and a user’s computer setup, all refunds were denied. This only added gasoline to the flames and EA would later be voted the worst company in America by The Consumerist for the second year in a row, the first company to achieve the dishonor in consecutive years. Eventually, SimCity was patched up, new servers were added, and the game is now in a functioning state. But given the huge PR mess, the inability to deliver, and the consumer fallout, this can be considered EA’s first strike. There would be one more to come in 2013, though. The next strike to be thrown at EA would come in as a bit of a curveball.
Battlefield 4 was released in late October and one of the publisher’s most consistently performing franchises was plagued with bugs and server shortages. It didn’t matter if players were using the last generation of consoles or if they were using their PCs. The server outages occurred across all platforms, and even though it was promised these issues would be fixed in time for the Xbox One and PS4 launches, this promise would go unfulfilled. There’s an argument to be made that EA doesn’t deserve all the blame. After all, EA is only the publisher, while DICE is the studio that developed Battlefield 4. DICE should be held responsible for certain in-game glitches. Some bugs caused the game to crash, while other bugs halted progress within the main campaign.
These weren’t your average day-one bugs. These were game ending glitches, which are maddening to discover after dropping $60 on a video game. Then again, EA set the release date. EA is the company responsible for choosing to rush a title’s release so it comes out before Call of Duty: Whatever. EA is definitely the company in charge of maintaining, or at least paying for, online servers that support the demand brought on by the Battlefield name. It should not be difficult to estimate the number of people who will be playing the next Battlefield installment. Take the number of people who played Battlefield 3 at it’s height of popularity, add 20% to that number to cover any unforeseen jumps in usage, and you have a safe and affordable (for EA anyways) figure to base your server maintenance off of. That way, when the game launches, the product being launched is actually prepared for launch.
That way, customers are not alienated. That way, your company makes more money in the long run. That way, you don’t get voted Worst Company in The Consumerist again. There is no excuse for the server outages that blighted the Battlefield 4 launch. It was the company’s biggest release of the year, and that should be reason enough to effectively support it. But, EA did not effectively support the game, and because of the Battlefield 4 issues, the company now has three lawsuits against it from upset investors. We’d consider that a strong strike two. It is 2014 now, and EA’s biggest release of the year is poised to be Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall. This is Vince Zampella’s comeback tour, a middle finger to former employer Activision, who escorted him off the premises during a contract dispute where Activision allegedly held back Modern Warfare 2 royalties.
This is not only the launch of a new game. It could be the launch of a new franchise. A new IP that some believe will remove Call of Duty from the top charts, ironically made by the same creator. Anybody who played the beta knows the game plays great. It ran smoothly and gamers noticed very few hiccups. It was reported that two million people played the beta, and considering the headlines read “Best of Titanfall beta,” as opposed to “Detest of Titanfall beta,” we’re hopeful that EA has learned from their mistakes. As Burgess Meredith once said, “You can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which gets filled first.” Hoping that EA will support their product isn’t the same as EA actually supporting their product.
The company needs to look at the Titanfall release as a chance to win back customers. They need to provide the launch with as many servers as necessary and then some. First impressions carry a lot of weight and if players see “Server Unavailable” or “Lost Connection” during Week One, they might not come back for Week Two. The publishing giant has two strikes against them and EA haters are foaming at the mouth for a strikeout. As much potential as Titanfall has going for it, though, it sure would be nice if they hit it out of the park. Add one more obvious baseball analogy here.
Works Cited: http://iamxbox.com/ea-cant-survive-i....Iu6DEyaE.dpuf
Though the servers are based on Microsoft's Azure platform, anything bad can happen, especially after last year's Sim City debacle, Battlefield 4 and even Dungeon Keeper. Should EA fail on Titanfall, this may hurt them more than ever.