Remember the absurdity of seeing in-game billboards for current day products in the future-set Battlefield: 2142? Thankfully, it sounds like that’s a thing of the past — at least for Electronic Arts. Speaking with Edge, EA’s free-to-play head Ben Cousins said in-game advertising hasn’t become the revenue-generator they expected, and it’s being quickly supplanted by microtransactions.
“We actually aren’t getting much from ad revenue at all. The in-game advertising business hasn’t grown as fast as people expected it to,” Cousins revealed. “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.”

Cousins is in charge of such free-to-play games as Battlefield Heroes and the forthcoming successor Battlefield: Play4Free (pictured above). “We hedged our bets [with Battlefield Heroes],” he said. “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.”

But don’t get your hopes up too high — this doesn’t mean EA is abandoning in-game ads altogether; just changing the way they approach them. Cousins used as an example a promotional campaign with Dr. Pepper, where buying a can and scanning the barcode unlocked an exclusive outfit in Heroes. “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,” Cousins admitted. “Maybe those days are over.”

EA Partners announced today that it will be handling the distribution duties for Portal 2. Steam will host the downloadable PC and Mac versions, of course, but the boxed copies for retail stores will be handled by EA. The company also reconfirmed earlier news of an April release.

The press release eagerly reminds us that the game recently won the Most Anticipated Game of 2011 from the Spike VGAs as well. “Portal 2 is Valve’s most innovative title in the company’s history and will be launched with a first-class launch campaign this April,” said VP Doug Lombardi in the press release. “We’re excited to be working with Electronic Arts to deliver this title as we expand our platform strategy to include the Mac and PlayStation 3 platforms.”

Following the release of Medal of Honor reviews across the Internet yesterday (including our own, which scored it a very respectable B), the price of Electronic Arts stock saw a pretty significant dip. The reviews generally weren’t as high as the hype may have suggested they would be, and that response led to a $1.05 drop (6%) in share prices yesterday to $16.61. Today, it’s dropped a bit even further to $16.54 as of 11:36AM EDT.

That’s certainly not the sort of response EA could have hoped to have coincide with the release of their newly relaunched shooter franchise. But, as you’d expect, the mega-publisher has released a statement trying to spin the situation in a positive fashion.

“The game had the highest pre-orders in the 11-year history of the Medal of Honor franchise,” the statement (via the LA Times) read in part, perhaps trying to suggest that sales figures will be much better than the reviews would lead you to believe. Unfortunately, we can’t count on the NPD to provide us with any sales figures next month now that it’s doing away with hardware and software numbers from its monthly reports.

The statement continued, “This is an essentially big achievement considering Medal of Honor has been dormant for several years. This is the first year in rebooting the franchise. Medal of Honor is part of a larger EA strategy to take share in the shooter category. This is a marathon not a sprint — today’s Medal of Honor launch represents a step forward in that race.”

Did you pick up Medal of Honor yesterday? If not, were you dissuaded by the tone of many of the reviews that were released?

Electronic Arts is leaving no stone unturned in their quest to make the most of the upcoming World Cup. Hot on the heels of the announcement of 2010 FIFA World Cup, we have FIFA Online, which will be free-to-play this summer.

Players with a broadband Internet connection and a decent computer should be able to access the title, which will contain more than 30 licensed leagues and 500 clubs. As with the mainline FIFA games, players will be able to acquire players, upgrade skills and build up their dream team.

Like most “free” experiences, there is a micro-transaction angle. Users will be able to acquire unique apparel for their players for a little extra cash, and “additional content will be designed for the game based on feedback by fans.”

Beta testing for FIFA Online will kick off February 3, with an English language version scheduled to launch in June — just in time for the World Cup.

If you want to register for the closed beta, you can do so via the official site.

“FIFA is definitely the best football game on the market, and I am delighted to be featured on the cover again,” said Manchester United and England striker, Wayne Rooney. “I play the game regularly online and against a lot of the lads at the club and I’m looking forward to the 360 degree control as it will make FIFA even more realistic than any other football game out there. “

“I’m really pleased to be part of the EA Sports FIFA franchise. Being on the cover of this great football video game with such a long history is really special for me, “said Lampard.

“To join the likes of Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard on the cover of FIFA is a huge honour for me,” said Theo Walcott. “FIFA is the game of choice in the Arsenal dressing room so I’ll have to keep on top of my game to make sure I’m the best FIFA 10 player at the club.”

FIFA 10 will be the first-ever football game to exhibit ‘true’ 360-degree dribbling action. 70% of total development time was apparently devoted to refining and improving the series’ gameplay. The rest 30% was spend on innovating and adding brand-new features to the game. Therefore, players certainly have a good reason to expect its coming. And FIFA 10 will be available in stores worldwide from October 2 on PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, PC platform and NDS. For Nintendo DS owners, R4 DS cards no doubt are perfect preparation for this upcoming exciting game!

R4 DS Revolution Card