Electronic Arts Aims for Microtransactions in All of its Future Games

Much to the chagrin of gamers everywhere, EA announced its intentions to expand its methods to monetize its games. Blake Jorgenson, CFO of the games publisher, spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference on February 27. Jorgenson said, “The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games.”

“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.”

EA’s SimCity

Jorgenson acknowledged that EA needs to build up the proper infrastructure to be able to handle the weight of these new microtransactions. “If you’re doing microtransactions and you’re processing credit cards for every one of these microtransactions you’ll get eaten alive,” he said. Accordingly, EA will not outsource these operations to another entity. Rather, Jorgenson said “we’re bringing that all in-house now.”

It remains to be seen whether or not EA is correct in saying that consumers will be “enjoying and embracing” the company’s attempts to introduce what is essentially a level of “pay to play” beyond the initial purchase of the game.

EA did not announce when it will start the new monetizing program.