EA Selling Tutorials Via Xbox Live

So, not only is EA selling in-game money for the Godfather via Xbox Live, but now they're actually trying to wring money from consumers so they can know how to play the games they bought. Joystiq has some commentary on EA's newest practice: charging for tutorials. From the article: "We decided to try one of the videos out, purchasing a Passing strategy guide for Madden NFL 07. The 246.34 MB downloaded provided little that would help our game. The video depicts a series of in-game passes with the occasional overhead view; once or twice arrows and yellow circles were used to highlight a player but it did not complement the announcer. To understand the voice-over commentary, it is assumed that you have a good grasp on formation and position terminology. If 'using the safety to cover the back' goes over your head, this video is not for you -- then again, if you are well-versed in football slang, you will likely learn nothing new anyways." I know Microsoft has kept a hands-off policy on this so far, but this stuff has to stop before companies like EA and Q! drag their product through the mud.

Let the Marketplace Decide

[blueZhift]

Nothing particularly evil about selling tutorials or strategy guides. Just let the market decide. If these online guides are worth anything, then people will buy, if not, they won't. It'll be interesting to see how these online guides develop in the console world and if the games begin to be built with hooks for the optional guides that will allow the player to easily try out what he/she just learned. No one wants to be nickel and dimed to death, but if the guides add real value and aren't just a cynical afterthought, then good things could be ahead.

Re:Prima

[GrumblyStuff]

Either you're just trying to be funny or you're trolling. That said, Prima is not at fault here. They don't sell guides as so much as walkthroughs.

Teaching the basics is guiding (hence the name).

To put things in perspective, Perfect Dark had a tutorial system and that was on a cartridge. UT2004 had a built-in tutorial maps IIRC.

But you know, that's really not the point. If you're not into football, you wouldn't be getting this game. If you are, you'll know about football and will have likely played prior versions. What EA is doing here is selling something of no value and people will buy it assuming it'll give them better understanding of the gameplay.

just wait

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

they will try to get GameFaqs and others shut down to "protect their IP" or some other stupid shit.

The next version of Doom IDKFA won't give you keys and ammo, it will open up the menu where you can pay 5$ to have keys and ammo (on a per level per session basis of course).

Re:I dono..

[kinglink]

If you look at it that way, you're right. It might be cool.

If you look at it another way, the worse instruction manual they give you or ingame hint system, the more money they can get this way. Madden has always been a hard game to master, but if they remove all the "how to's" in the game it would be stupid, but now it makes more money for the company.

I'm not saying EA would. But they are EA...

This should be expected in a brand new market

[thebaron2]

This is what companies do when they're given access to brand new markets or distribution options - they're going to throw a bunch of new ideas/concepts at us and they'll see what we'll buy.

This shouldn't be very shocking to anyone. For the first time, these developers can reach the console audience sans middle-man, which means that they can develop and offer products that distribution costs alone once prohibited. It never would have been worth developing bite-size tutorials that would ship on CDs to retail outlets and then to the consumer - retail markup, distribution costs, and physical materials would have been far too prohibitive. Now they can create material and just upload it.

The problem now is sorting out what gamers are willing to pay for, and at what price. If they don't try a whole bunch of new ideas and offer diverse products, then we'll never see anything REALLY cool come out of this. And of course many ideas will flop - this one looks like a prime candidate - but we've still got to cut these guys some slack as they determine what's realistic to sell online.