http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-golden-age-for-gaming-upon-us-industry-needs-to-embrace-change/1100-6420874/

If I may, for a second;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6DAxC6wp70

I'm not even going to grace this with a description. Let's just get to ripping apart the quotes.

"I think we're going into almost a golden age of gaming, where it doesn't matter where you are, at any time, any place, any price point, any amount of time, there's a game available to you,"

Yeah, so long as you have the equivalent of a $1000 US to buy that shiny new PS4 in Brazil. What if you live in Afghanistan or Antarctica. Could I play games there too?

"And our job as a company is to provide those game experiences. And then on our big franchises, tie them all together."

As a company, you've successfully failed over the previous decade or so to provide any of those experiences without hindering the player in some way. Your practices net you the Worst Company in America crown. What do you say to that?

And what's this about tying franchises together? Am I going to kick around a soccer ball with my Normandy team against Faith and the guys from Battlefield Bad Company 2?

Tying games together is likely in reference to EA's well-stated "games-as-a-service" model, where the publisher hopes to provide unified experiences across franchises like Battlefield and FIFA through tie-in games and the like.

"I think the challenge sometimes is that the growth of gaming... there's a core that doesn't quite feel comfortable with that, I don't get frustrated, but I scratch my head at times and say, 'Look. These are different times.' And different times usually evoke different business models. Different consumers come in. They've got different expectations. And we can either ignore them or embrace them, and at EA, we've chosen to embrace them."

By ignoring your long-standing relationships with your previous clients. Great to see you in charge as COO.

Gaming as a business is not like other industries. Microtransactions only serve to hurt developers and gamers. Even if they didn't, could you honestly say that the way EA has done it so far hasn't hurt people?

And let's look at a different yet specific example. This is from a post on the steam community:

"A simpoint is worth 10 cents. So everything on the Sims 3 store costs approximately $74,486.50. As for DLC/the game itself, the total is $439.81. So grand total, you're looking at $74,926.31 to own everything the Sims 3 has to offer."

Telling.

"There is a core--controversial statement coming from me, sadly--that just doesn't like that, because it's different, it's disruptive. It's not the way it used to be. I used to put my disc in the tray or my cartridge in the top, and I'd sit there and play. And all of these young people coming in, or God forbid, these old people coming into gaming!"

You ever think that maybe that's what these new people want too? To just sit down and play the feckin' game? I don't think anybody new to gaming would stick around for long if they new they had to keep forking out of their wallets to continue progressing.

"I think the core audience that dislikes the fact that there are play-for-free games and microtransactions built into those... fine, I get that, I don't think anybody has to like it. I think that's where it goes. It's like me; I get grumpy about some things, but if the river of progress is flowing and I'm trying to paddle my canoe in the opposite direction, then eventually I'm just going to lose out. From the perspective of what needs to happen in this industry, we need to embrace the fact that billions of people are playing games now."

We need to embrace the fact that billions of people are playing games that are not yours. There are successful F2P games, but the formula is extremely difficult to get right, and turning almost all of your games into this horrible scam can only serve to destroy the integrity of the original design plans the developers wish to turn into reality.

You will lose out because you're a businessman, not a gamer, and you fail the grasp why gamers enjoy what they enjoy. We're happy to fork out $60 on release for a new title. Hell, I put down $220 for a Halo: Reach preorder once. But once that game is in our hands, that's where the transaction should end. We go off to play, you go off to fix the game (since apparently all AAA games are now released as Alpha/Beta versions and then just patched as they go) and then make a new one.

"We just have to embrace it, we as an industry have to embrace change. We can't be music. We cannot be music. Because music said, 'Screw you. You're going to buy a CD for $16.99, and we're going to put 14 songs on there, two of which you care about, but you're going to buy our CD.' Then Shawn Fanning writes a line of code or two, Napster happens, and the consumers take control."

You might be so familiar with games as music then, because you own some extremely boring franchises. How come games like Fez, the original Halo, Deus Ex and the majority of Nintendo's title are always being replayed when they don't offer any extension content? Maybe it's because they realised how important it was to get the core gameplay experience correct before gipping the consumer?

"You have to embrace social media as a plus rather than a negative, everybody has a megaphone now. Everybody has an opinion, and you learn to filter the rant from the constructive feedback."

You might want to fix your filter then.