[trose]

And yet folks will keep falling for the CGI trailers and marketing hype EA churns out for every game. The only solution is to wholesale stop supporting ANY game EA produces.

[EpicEng]

And a single whale can make up for literally hundreds of lost sales through micro-transactions.

[spystath]

Exactly! Microtransactions are there to grab the big spenders. Mobile "games" follow this pattern to the extreme. For example some guy spent $1M playing a mobile game ([0] and HN discussion [1]). Honestly I don't understand why game companies are left to exploit gullible people (adults and/or kinds) into what is essentially gambling.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-s...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780

[delecti]

While true, I imagine whales are less likely to stick around if there aren't enough non-whales around to keep things interesting.

[mrguyorama]

Keep in mind there's also the fact that little 10 year old Timmy doesn't actually care about any of this. He just wants to play star wars damn it! It's mommy's money that EA is taking, and mom doesn't know what's going on and likely doesn't have the time to notice that games are doing what they are

[emsy]

I doubt this would happen as long as EA got hold of various sports licenses.