EA Backing Away from In-Game Advertisements; Microtransactions More Successful

In an interview with Edge Magazine, EA's general manager of free-to-play games Ben Cousins explained that EA isn't "getting much from ad revenue at all. The in-game advertising business hasn't grown as fast as people expected it to."

Battlefield Play4Free, which is not-shockingly free-to-play.

Battlefield: Heroes, the group's previous game, used both in-game advertising and microtransactions. "We thought we'd do in-game advertising and virtual goods sales, and one of those took off really fast and the other hasn't really taken off at all," said Cousins. "If you think about how fast the virtual goods business has grown in the last year or so, it's been much quicker and become a much more reliable source of revenue."

That isn't to say that in-game advertising or advertising partnerships are a thing of the past for EA. "We did a deal with Dr Pepper for Battlefield Heroes, where if you buy a bottle and scan in the code you get an exclusive outfit. That kind of deep integration will work, I think, but I'm not convinced that we'll have billboards in games and things like that. Maybe those days are over."

Does this mean the end of soft-drink and video card advertisements in warzones? I hope so!