EA Sports has announced that beginning with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 every game will include a one time use registration code for an Online Pass. This pass will give you all the features available to take your game online and an occasional premium item (Tiger will give you an advanced driver). If you are renting or buying a used copy of the game, be prepared to shell out $10 to be able to use any online service included.
EA is well known to try to nickle and dime everybody by letting you unlock items in games with money rather than spending a ton of in game time to accomplish this. Many will point to this as another money hungry move by EA, but from a business prospective I can totally understand it.
I am a Gamefly subscriber and rent a good number of games. I also from time to time will pick up a used copy of a game from my local GameStop. But we all must remember the used game market is where GameStop makes its money. They purchase a copy of Madden 11 for sale, the consumer buys it, then trades it in for a fraction of the purchase price where Gamestop will sell that game once again. EA and other game developers get paid once for that copy while Gamestop continues to get paid for copies.
GameStop is publicly stating that they are excited by this move from EA but I can’t believe they would be happy with it behind closed doors. What the retailer must do (hopefully) is combat this by offering a lower resale price on their sports used games. My suggestion is to sell the game anywhere from $39.99 to $44.99 still giving the consumer a “deal” on their purchase knowing they have to pay the extra $10 at home.
What this really could hurt though is the consumer. If you go to trade in your game and GameStop lowers their resale price, you would likely get even less credit on your trade in. Also I don’t have much faith in the employee at the retail level letting the consumer know of the extra $10 charge. I can see many a customer this year going home with their used game, setting up to play their friends, and then finding out they need more money.
It will be interesting to see what develops in the future from this announcement. Will other developers follow suit to combat used games? Only time will tell.
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they are a big publisher so it’s hard to say it absolutely but I seriously am going to start avoiding EA titles
I actually am tempted to check out Backbreaker for football.
I don’t view this as a bad thing Mike. Take Battlefield for example. With the new purchase, I am automatically a VIP and receive all future updates and maps for free. The cost of the original game didn’t get jacked up, I paid what I would have anyway. Now there is a potential downside here. If studios know they aren’t going to receive any additional revenue with people buying new DLC, will they give it the same attention? New map packs in CoD generate a lot of buzz and money for the studio so it’s obviously a top priority to get them out on a regular basis. I just hope they don’t get lazy with games we love because they’ve already sucked us in.
And I know my comment had nothing to do with sports, I’m just lazy.
Well, I see the point for sure but let’s take a game like Madden as an example. It is a yearly game that people will buy every year so the used market will likely be flooded every year. Say someone wanted to go get last year’s on the cheap, or to use your example wanted to go grab the original Bad Company cheap since it’s more affordable now…that screws that person into having to pay for something that was otherwise free with purchase before.
I just don’t like the principle of this, I don’t like having my hand forced.
Or to take an example from my good pal DFS today, his kid has his own console and they love to play Madden. Well this year he gets to buy the new game, then pay an extra 10 bucks to have his kid be able to play on the 2nd 360…I think that is complete crap.
That gets into another thing (that I will write about sometime) games that EA puts out yearly like Madden should be priced at $49.99 since you are basically buying a roster update each year.
Imagine that. EA trying to monopolize the gaming market anyway they can. Maybe if I preorder Tiger 11 through GameStop I can play the 19th hole with him and plug a random chick he was with if I buy upgrades at a buck a pop…