Microtransactions in Anthem is an inevitability. Earlier this week, publisher EA held a quarterly financial meeting with investors. Here, CFO Blake Jorgensen stated a number of goals and objectives for the upcoming year. One of these was related to Bioware’s upcoming RPG, Anthem. Jorgensen stated that “live services” will begin to “roll out” after the game’s release. The full quote is listed below.
“We’re careful not to put too large of a forecast in there, and clearly [Anthem] will impact this year as well as next year as we not only continue to sell more into the next year but as we start rolling out the live services associated with that game.”
This should come as no surprise. EA recently struggled with backlash from Star Wars: Battlefront 2’s microtransactions. Once fans began to voice their displeasure and the highest downvoted comment in Reddit history, the microtransactions were removed. However, it was not long until EA implemented them back into the release.
Anthem is planned to be a multiplayer focused game but can be played solo. This is similar to Ubisoft’s The Division or Bungie’s Destiny franchise. BioWare still plans for players to make story decisions by themselves even without a team. This is set to be BioWare’s most ambitious project yet. Anthem is still on track for a March 2019 release date.