EA's push for having "every possible game to have multi-player" is ruining the story/single player of a lot of good games.
This x1,000.
And the reason they want multiplayer is so EA can force an online pass onto people buying the game used (their "Project $10, if you recall), and eventually shut the servers off for everyone that bought their pass, thus forcing them on to whatever the next iteration of Mass Effect will be.
Anyway, it looks like BioWare is going to be another one of the many studios that EA has acquired over time, only to run it into the ground and sell it for parts once it starts turning out clunkers. And the clunker period for BioWare doesn't appear to be too far off at this point, sad to say. Probably why BioWare's best people have recently left the studio to start their own endeavors.
Money-mongering at it's finest. It's like EA feels like they don't get as much money as they deserve. Their games sell and their games sell for the most part really well so I can't see how they don't get enough money. So they force the "online pass" on every freaking game they make, which makes buying a game used obsolete. Absolutely ridiculous.
In an economy where money is tight as it is (which I guess if that's the case video games shouldn't be bought in the first place) but it appears with this online pass crap, that EA doesn't care about their customers.
And what's even more ridiculous is the fact that there are idiot buyers out there who are just blindly following EA, because "look at all the cool new features they are putting in the game!!" So EA continues to not loss money and so it sends them the message that, "yes, we can screw the customer over, because they still buy our games."
Furthermore, because they have a monopoly on the gat damn market for football games, they can continue to put crap out every year and make us be beta-testers until they patch the game. NFL 2k5 is much better than Madden 12 could ever dream to be. College Hoops 2k8 was eons better than NCAA Basketball 2010. NCAA Football continues to put out crap year after year.
More about the NCAA Football series, when EA asks for suggestions that they'll put in the game for next year, do they even listen to us? I mean, I see a ton of people asking for just better overall game play, forget the flashy multi-player or custom conferences in franchise, just a deeper franchise mode (suspensions, better game play, etc...) but what does EA promote? These flashy, more-often-than-not broken new things that are "really cool" instead of focusing on what makes football, football.
Okay, end rant. It's upsetting how EA is ruining video games.