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EA Pushing For More Open-World Games Due To Market Success

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EA is looking to dedicate more resources to the development of open-world games due to the popularity and market success of the genre.

Ex-Bioware developer Manveer Heir spoke on Waypoint’s podcast (via Eurogamer) about EA pushing for more open-world games.

“It’s definitely a thing inside of EA, they are generally pushing for more open-world games,” says Heir. “And the reason is you can monetise them better. The words in there that were used are ‘have them come back again and again’. Why do you care about that at EA? The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. It’s the same reason we added card packs to Mass Effect 3: how do you get people to keep coming back to a thing instead of ‘just’ playing for 60 to 100 hours?”

“The problem is that we’ve scaled up our budgets to $100m+ and we haven’t actually made a space for good linear single-player games that are under that. But why can’t we have both? Why does it have to be one or the other? And the reason is that EA and those big publishers in general only care about the highest return on investment. They don’t actually care about what the players want; they care about what the players will pay for. You need to understand the amount of money that’s at play with microtransactions.”

“That’s the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn’t really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money. It’s repeatable income versus one-time income. I’ve seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards.”

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Capcom Announces New Content for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

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Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

Capcom has officially announced that Free Title Update 4 will be arriving for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak on February 7th which will include new foes alongside new Anomaly Research content, Event Quests and a new paid DLC.

Velkhana, the elusive Elder Dragon, has been spotted by the scouts of Elgado Outpost and poses a chilly challenge as it can freeze hunters in an attack, and will join the arrival of Risen Crimson Glow Valstrax when the new update drops.

New Anomaly Research will be available, Afflicted Chaotic Gore Magala joining the A8 Quests, and the Anomaly Investigation cap will be upped to 220.

More is in the works for Free Title Update 5, which is currently slated to arrive in April

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Overwatch 2 Aims to Penalize Players Who Are Friends with Cheaters, Increased Voice Comms Monitoring

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Overwatch 2

Blizzard is leveling up their efforts to thwart cheaters and misconduct within Overwatch 2, as the company aims to penalize players who are friends with cheaters and will amp up their monitoring of voice communications.

The company detailed this in the brand new update for its Defense Matrix Initiative, which is focused on curbing “gameplay sabotage, abusive chat, and cheating” stating their plan to come down on players who team up with cheaters, and more.

Blizzard admitted that cheating in Overwatch 2 is a problem and has “actioned over 50,000 accounts” since the game launched and starting in Season 3 they will be actively identifying players that purposely team up with players who are regularly flagged as cheaters, and will also face potential discipline.

Overwatch 2 will also have improved protection for streamers, as the issue of Stream sniping continues to be a problem, and in Season 3 they  will be “introducing new streaming protection features that should be a huge step toward enabling content creators to share Overwatch 2 with their fans safely.”

Blizzard is encouraging players to report any disruptive or problematic behaviour in their matches.

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EA Shuts Down Apex Legends Mobile, Stops Development on Battlefield Mobile Game

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EA and Respawn Entertainment is shutting down their Apex Legends mobile game with the company announced that they will be sunsetting the title this May with EA adding that they have also stopped development on a mobile Battlefield title.

According to Respawn Entertainment, the decision to sunset Apex Legends was not an easy one to make but the company said that “factors” beyond its control have prevented it from “maintaining the high-quality experience and content” players deserve and expect.

Despite the game having a rather strong start, Respawn said that the content pipeline for the game began to “fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.”

EA announced that they made the decision to halt the Battlefield mobile title as they wish to create “deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem” which made them arrive at the decision to “pivot from the current direction”

“We remain highly committed to unlocking Battlefield’s enormous potential,” the company said in the statement. “We’re hard at work at evolving Battlefield 2042 and are in pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”

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