These last few months have stirred up a lot of controversy with loot boxes and microtransactions, but there’s a reason publishers keep adding them into games. Speaking at an investor program (and partially transcribed by Gamesindustry.biz), EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has stated about half of the ~75% of FIFA 18 players that play the game’s Ultimate Team mode eventually spend money in the mode. This ends up being at just around a third of FIFA 18 players are paying for microtransactions.
Here is Jorgensen’s breakdown of the FIFA 18 Ultimate Team numbers:
“Today about 70-75% of all the people that buy the sports games join Ultimate Team,” Jorgensen said. “It’s fun. It’s a great way to play the game. Of those 75% of the people, about half of those people actually spend some money and the other half just play without spending. But in a free-to-play world, that’s a fantastic balance of spenders and non-spenders.”
Jorgensen also speaks about how microtransactions help with player enjoyment:
“This entertainment form is probably one of the greatest entertainment values for consumers,” Jorgensen said. “If you go to a movie today, it can cost you in the US $20 to get in the movie before you buy popcorn, which is fun. It’s great, I love it. But at the same time, a $60 video game that people are playing three, four, five thousand hours during the year on, that’s a lot of value for your money. And even if you spend some money on top of that, you’re typically spending it on increasing the fun and excitement of the game. So we’re just trying to give the consumers what they really want, and more of it, versus trying to build another game or do something different.”
Those hour counts seem rather high, especially considering he’s talking about a series with new yearly installments.
Regardless, make sure to check the Gameindustry.biz article for more choice quotes from the presentation at the NASDAQ 37th Investor Program.
Have you spent any money on the Ultimate Team mode?
[Source: Gameindustry.biz]
