EA Sports Planning Subscription Service

I purchase NHL and Madden every year and I do not think I like this for said titles. I feel as if they do not make enough DLC for these 2 games. Should we be worried that we pay yearly subsciption for Live (which was increased) and now we have to pay on top of that? What is Microsoft doing with that money? Do they pocket all of it or does it go to the gaming companies?

So…instead of getting this things for free now, we have to pay for it; first DLC, now demos.

No thank you.

I’m also surprised at the number of people that see this as a good thing. Can’t you see where this will lead? Pretty soon you will get only a shell of a game unless you subscribe to this service. I can see things like roster updates, online franchises, etc… being tied to this service in the future. Maybe even online play will be locked for non-subscibers? I wouldn’t put it past EA. They are going to make it sound good when they initially release the service, but watch how it morphs into something you have to buy just to get the full experience of the game. Yet another way to try to bleed money from their customers while rehashing poor products year after year. No thanks, EA.

My issue with this is that the subscription could eventually include roster updates and certain game modes that we currently get for free. I really can’t see any use for a “subscription” when I pay for Xbox Live already. Nothing mentioned there interests me but my guess is it will be necessary to purchase it in order to get certain game modes and features that were once just part of the $60 purchase. This idea stinks of greed. Us hardcore gamers will end up paying for it but the casual gamer will have a game that is thin in features and will stop buying eventually. I hope EA rethinks this plan.

When companies look at how to sunset something from a product standpoint, they do a couple of things. They will ensure the ‘new’ product has bells and whistles the older product/version does not. They’ll immediately address bugs/issues in the new system, while leaving them in the older one and telling the customers the fix is to upgrade. Eventually they’ll kill support altogether (if possible), and in case of ASP’s disable the service (this only occurs when the cost of maintenance exceeds the service revenue stream). Basically it’s a carrot, stick, electric prod, and finally sudden death approach.

As I’ve said before, ASP/Service based gaming is the golden chalice of all gaming companies as all revenue streams for these games are literally 12x (and greater) than the sale of a normal video game. Blizzards revenues for WoW have eclipsed anything before it, and companies want to replicate that success. From a company perspective, I can’t blame them for doing it, but as a consumer, it’s horrible. Who wants to pay $120 a year to play football (or pick your sport)? Not this gamer, and make no mistake. This is Peter Moore’s vision for EA Sports. A subscription based sports gaming company with a virtual economy to boot (this is how M$ succeeded when Moore was part of the gaming unit).

So for those who see this as a good thing, beware the carrot, for the stick is soon to follow.

Overall it sounds like a good idea. I do love the idea of carry over content. That’s one thing that I wish COD had. If I feel the final price point is acceptable, I am likely to purchase it. The only thing that concerns me is the wording “download & play the final version of any PARTICIPATING game before release. I would like to know what games those are before I purchase. I don’t wanna shell out my money before hand and find out its only for extra content for FIFA, Tiger Woods, or SSX.

I pay 50 bucks a year for xbox live now a new way to tap into people pockets….

I remember when they rolled out the online passes for Madden, etc. we had lots of people talking about how that was a reasonable thing to charge people for and how everything would be fine as long as it didn’t go any further.

Now we see they want to charge for features other games come with (DLC carryover, etc) and we have lots of people saying this is a reasonable thing to charge people for and how everything is fine as long as it didn’t go any further.

Next year they’ll add roster updates and online head-to-head to the subscription and plenty of people will say that’s a reasonable thing to charge people for and how everything will be fine as long as it doesn’t go any further.

Madden 2014, after booting past the console logo screens, will display a giant raised middle finger informing people that they need to subscribe if they want to play the game at all. At that point lots of people will be talking about…

If they would actually make offline franchise playable and put back in all the things that were gutted from the game when switching to the next gen consoles, I would consider it although I should not have to pay extra for that. It will really depend on what the subscription price is. If Michael Vick is on the cover, I am not buying the game anyway.

Except for the DLC for Tiger Woods carrying over to new games, I am failing to see the appeal of this. If you could carry over your franchise or Be A Pro to the new FIFA or NHL I would definitely pay for that but to just get a discount for new DLC seems rather lame.

I guess it also depends on how early you might get to access the full version of a game via download. If it’s like seven days I could see a lot of people jumping on that. If it’s just one or two days probably not.