Sometimes its impossible to break old habbits.

One of the first pieces I wanted to do is on the smugness of the big publishers, especially EA and Activision. Quite frankly I have wanted to do a piece slamming EA for 7 years now and Activision more so recently. I'll do EA first.

EA has become world famous for exploitation. They don't have alot of customers amongst the core because their core games are quite frankly... well... not there. Seriously until 2008 what were EA's big core titles?

EA was mostly known for sports titles, The Sims and racing games like Burnout and Need for Speed (the latter has really gone downhill since Underground 2). They have a habit of exploiting the casual audience from the car nut to the sports fan to the women to keep on handing out more money all the time for the exact same games. Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA Live & Tiger Woods all get yearly releases now most likely Grand Slam Tennis being added to that. Roster updates and minimal graphical improvements seems to be enough to justify a new game these days and EA has polluted the industry spreading its "franchiseitis" to other companies.

A classic case

Medal of Honour was an average franchise, typical WWII dribble and then Allied Assult came and it was sold great, and was great. Now EA are just milking the name despite the guys who made Allied Assult are now at Activision and are known as Infinity Ward, doing the first 2 Call of Duty games then cutting ties with WWII to do what is now known as the "Modern Warfare" series.

Need for Speed was great during its day, saw a few changes and re-inventions until it just became the same game over and over with more glitches and failing to move forward in the industry, yet the name made pieces of garbage like Carbon and Undercover sell well.

And of course the Sims. Maxis was not owned by EA when the first Sims came out but was with the 2nd. Sims 2 has had more expansion packs than thought possible and has become a definition of exploitation of a popular franchise.

Some people woke up, realising that a minor new ability was not worth coughing up for another Sims expansion pack, and an updated roster did not justify buying a new Madden or FIFA or whatever and buying up developers to become part of their exploitation machine to the point where EA became a villain to the core audience, and they only made their image worse by buying out BioWare, trying to acquire Take Two and doing the same old garbage every year, with maybe some new garbage every now and then like Army of Two.

In 2008 it looked like it learned its lesson after it was surpassed by Activision and launched 2 brand new franchises in Mirrors Edge and Dead Space. Mirrors Edge was very edgy and maybe should have spent more time in the cooker, clipping was an issue, combat was terrible and the game was far, far too short. Dead Space was brilliant, maybe the best new franchise released that year. Some people including myself hoped that EA could possibly turned a new leaf.

Dead Space was a fantastic game, although this bastard really pissed me off

Later that year they released Spore, with some of the worst DRM since Sony's rootkit. Displaying that EA is still EA the core backlashed against them not seen before. Likely out of pure spite: EA's DRM abilities backfired on them causing the game to be pirated more times than any other game in history, followed by countless 'one star' reviews on Amazon. Will Wright does not work for EA anymore.

So what is EA doing right now? Doing what EA do best: Exploitation.

• Skate 2: Exactly the same as Skate 1
  
• Dead Space Extraction: Capitalsing on the name already to do a rail shooter on the Wii.
• EA Sports Active: Copying Wii Fit trying to get a slice of that profitable pie.
• EA Sports 2010 titles: Same old garbage as last year.
• Rock Band, Beatles and Lego, for the young and impressionable, to the old Wii owners.

And of course their biggest title this year:Sims 3. Not content with making girls shelf out for expansion packs, now they want them to fork out per ability, taking the idea of microtransatctions to redicilous levels. By far their biggest money grab yet.

EA will never change: Releasing junk based on nostaliga works, so why should they make good games? Nintendo understands like EA knows: it doesn't pay to make good games. Better to shelve and market crap like Wii Fit, EA Sports Active, Sims and Wii Music.

Sarah Palin + The Sims = My idea of hell! Why are either still relevant to anybody?

As for me? I tend not to really buy EA games, and sometimes if I do I dont want to encourage them with re-releasing the same crap so I wait until its dirt cheap 2nd hand so they dont get a cut of it (and still legal :p). Dead Space and Mirror's Edge however I did purchase new as I felt those games were in the right direction and felt EA should have been rewarded for it.

But since not to many people followed suit, I'm sure they realise its more money for them to rely on the mindless idiots who dont know any better.