I hate to say it, but I think the Battle Pass will stick. I hope not and will keep them until someone invents a tastier and more profitable way for players to start investing in triples again, much like loot boxes and time-saving microtransactions. I wish I could erase it from existence. – A game with an inflated budget and having to put up with the season pass being the norm.
That’s my conclusion after researching last week’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora leak. According to a leak, Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world Avatar game will include both a season pass and currency packs. Whether or not the leak is true won’t be known until the company’s non-E3 presentation in June, but I believe Ubisoft is incorporating live service microtransactions into single player (drop-in his multiplayer). is not difficult. , if the leak is accurate) an open world game. This is pretty standard for Ubisoft to do.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like a signal. Ubisoft recently became one of the biggest punching bags in the industry. A lot depends on the success of this game, given the financial situation we’re facing and the fact that we’ve almost completely cleaned up our slate of upcoming games. and there is no guarantee that Frontiers of Pandora will be as successful as the film series. Ubisoft, like everyone else, knows all too well how bad their press battle pass and live service systems are these days. Put it all together and you have a recipe for ridicule. This could be the game that finally brings humans and gamers together. His Ubisoft Avatar game concept with a battle pass ignites a sense of contempt shared by all.
This shows that the Battle Pass is taking hold. They’ve been so successful and generating additional revenue that Ubisoft is willing to remain the butt of jokes, or into the type of microtransactions obligatory because no one has a better idea. It’s just happening. In both cases, this seems to be the way it should be, and no amount of negative feedback will change that.
So far, we’ve been able to convince companies to stop doing a lot of predatory, low-value monetization. EA famously removed loot boxes shortly after the launch of Battlefront 2, and even Ubisoft withdrew some nasty XP boosters you can buy in Assassin’s Creed Origins.Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Some believe that the negative reaction to WB triggered WB to slow down the game and remove the Battle Pass and other live service systems, but as we discussed earlier, removing the major is too late. from the game. Similarly, there’s no way Ubisoft would react to Avatar’s Suicide Squad story, but it’s nothing new. Battle passes have been nasty for years, but we see them more than ever.
I don’t think it’s a necessary evil, but at the same time, it’s easy to see why battle passes became so popular. Inflated budgets and out-of-control development schedules over the past few years, coupled with an overall lack of structure and stability in . It’s also a very scary investment for a company. So it makes sense that you want to find ways to increase your earnings and ensure your success beyond the $60 price tag. The clearest evidence that microtransactions have reached a point of no return is Sony, the world’s most prolific maker of prestigious single-player games, investing heavily in live services over the next few years. is the fact that It’s clear that the next game in The Last of Us series will be a free-to-play live service game, not another microtransaction-free single-player experience. If you don’t think faction 2 has a battle pass, you’re insane.
I’m not going to be fatalistic about it. Even where the inclusion of a Battle Pass is deemed acceptable, there are plenty of new and upcoming games that forgo the Battle Pass. It looks like the exact kind of game that passes are offered, but it’s not. I didn’t even have Gotham Knights, so there’s at least one good thing to say about it. We have Starfield, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, but these games have a Battle Pass.
Of course, the other big games of 2023 are Call of Duty, Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Counter-Strike 2, Avatar, EA Sports FC 24 (formerly FIFA 24), and Suicide Squad (probably). is. Every game almost certainly has a battle pass, or at least some form of nasty monetization. I wish it wasn’t, but I doubt it would free me from the grip of timed progression rewards that have to be paid up front. If the dying Ubisoft isn’t afraid to let them into the Avatar game, we’re pretty much doomed.