EA is ALL IN for microtransactions.

[MerrickG]

I don't know if this is really the best forum for this, but it does affect gaming in a (likely) negative way.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...tions-in-house

'We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way,' says CFO

EA will be integrating microtransactions into all of its games in future, the publisher's CFO has revealed.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, Blake Jorgensen said the publisher was interested in adding further ways to monetise its games.

"The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games," said Jorgensen.

"We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business."

A strong, secure backend is certainly important to handle the millions of payments needed to make console games with microtransactions profitable, and Jorgensen thinks his company has this taken care of.
"If you're doing microtransactions and you're processing credit cards for every one of those microtransactions you'll get eaten alive," he said.

"And so Rajat's team has built an amazing backend to manage that and manage that much more profitably. We've outsourced a lot of that stuff historically; we're bringing that all in-house now."

How long before we start getting shipped $60 empty discs and the rest of the game being sold as DLC?

How long before they start making the games so hard that you are practically REQUIRED to purchase DLC to win?