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Design by Physics
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Design by Physics

Case Study: Electronic Arts (EA) / SimCity 5

"Removing a discount offer for pre-orders surprisingly increased sales by over 40%."

The Challenge: Optimizing Pre-Order Conversions for a Gaming Title

Electronic Arts (EA) was preparing for the highly anticipated launch of SimCity 5 and sought to maximize pre-order sales. They wanted to understand if a common gaming marketing tactic offering an incentive would genuinely drive more conversions for their audience of avid gamers.

The A/B Test: Discount Offers vs. Direct Purchase

EA conducted a critical A/B test on the SimCity 5 sales page, comparing two distinct offers for pre-orders:

  • Control Version: Offered a 20% discount on a future purchase with the pre-order of SimCity 5. This represented a standard incentive-based marketing approach.
  • Variant Version: Presented a clean, straightforward offer to simply buy the game, with no additional discount or strings attached. This tested a direct call to action (CTA) approach.

The core hypothesis was to test whether the perceived benefit of a future discount would outweigh the simplicity and directness of a no-frills purchase pathway. This A/B test provided vital user psychology insights.

Sales with Discount Offer (Control): X% Conversion Rate (Illustrative Baseline)
Sales without Discount Offer (Variant): +40%+ Sales Increase

Key Takeaway & Actionable Recommendation: Optimizing Gaming Conversions

This case study challenges the common assumption that more incentives always lead to more conversions. For some audiences, particularly those highly motivated by the core product itself (like avid gamers for a new title), simplicity and directness can be far more powerful than additional, potentially distracting, offers. This is a crucial finding for gaming industry conversion rate optimization.

Recommendation: Analyze your audience's true motivation for engaging with your product or service. Consider whether extra incentives or complex offers might introduce unnecessary friction or dilute the core value proposition. Test simpler, more direct paths to conversion, especially when your product's appeal is inherently strong. This A/B testing user psychology insight suggests that sometimes, less is truly more for e-commerce sales optimization.