ea-easy posts

Just ahead of the official open beta launch of Battlefield Play4Free, Ben Cousins, the head of Electronic Arts' free-to-play game division EA Easy, has announced that he is leaving the publisher. Cousins made the announcement today on his Twitter page. He did not announce where he is going next, saying only, " ... soon as I can, I let everyone know."

Cousins helped to lead the EA Easy division for the past four years, launching games like Battlefield Heroes, Lord of Ultima and Battle Forge (which actually started as a traditional retail box game). The first person shooter Battlefield Play4Free officially launches its open beta today for players of Battlefield Bad Company 1 and 2 and Battlefield Heroes. The game's Twitter and Facebook followers get access the open beta on April 2 and everyone else can play the game on April 4.

[Via Gamesindustry.biz]

If Battlefield Heroes is kind of like comic books before the 1980s, then Battlefield Play4Free is more like the "grim and gritty" comics of the late 1980s. The game was first announced last Friday by Electronic Arts and now there's a new trailer that shows how the game really looks in motion.

The upcoming free-to-play game mixes content from both Battlefield 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 with graphics that you don't normally get in this kind of game. But we still don't care for the title. The closed beta test for Battlefield Play4Free will begin on November 30 with the official launch in spring 2011.

Download the Battlefield Play4Free Announcement trailer at Big Download (53 MB)

In the last couple of years we have seen the free-to-play PC game industry explode here in the US and also in Europe as players have embraced the type of games that got its start in Asia. At first the visual look for those games have been primitive compared to high end PC and console games but the level of graphics have improved greatly.

Today Electronic Arts announced Battlefield Play4Free, its newest free-to-play game and one that has graphics that come closer to the look of the Battlefield retail products. Develop reports that at the London Games Conference this week the head of the division behind the game said the free-to-play model could be a serious threat to the console game industry.

EA Easy head Ben Cousins stated, "At what point do the hardcore gamers switch over from spending $60 a month on console games to spending that much a month on microtransactions for an online title?" He added that its possible that within two to five years the free-to-play model could " ... cause a significant disruption to the traditional triple-A console market."