EA backtracks on recent microtransactions comments

Electronic Arts CFO Blake J. Jorgensen has backtracked on comments he made last week, stating that all future EA games will in fact not always include microtransactions. As part of a talk at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom Conference, Jorgensen previously stated, "We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way." However, at the 2013 Wedbush Transformational Technology Conference this week, Jorgensen further explained this statement. "I made a statement in the conference along the lines of 'We'll have microtransactions in our games,' and the community read that to be 'all games,' and that's really not true," he said. Jorgensen noted that it will, in fact, be every future mobile game from EA that includes microtransactions. "All of our mobile games will have microtransactions in them, because almost all of our mobile games are going to a world where its play-for-free," he added. "We were discussing back-office capabilities inside the company, and how we've built a platform to really be able to bring in-house our ability to do credit card processing, digital downloads, and manage a world in which there are more and more microtransactions as part of what we offer," he said. When it comes to console and PC games, Jorgensen explained that he doesn't see EA's offerings as microtransactions -- rather, he says they are extensions of the main game. "You're going to see extensions off of products like Battlefield Premium which are simply not microtransactions," he said. "They are premium services, or additional add-on products or download that we're doing... it is essentially an extension of the gameplay that allows someone to take a game that they might have played for a thousand hours, and play it for two thousand hours. We want to ensure that consumers are getting value." He finished, "The real core microtransaction component of our business is in the mobile part of the business, which is the free-to-play business."