EA's Strategy to Counter Used Games Sales

[Hawk]

Onyxmeth said:

Last August EA did this exact same thing with Madden 10. Since Madden doesn't have extra maps to offer though, they had a code to unlock a game mode called Online Franchise. This was one of the key new features in the game, and was a natural evolution of the Online League mode they created in Madden 09, which happened to be free and on the disc. It's actually advertised on the back of the box of Madden 10 in the features list to help sell the game. What isn't advertised on the box is that only new buyers with a code packaged in get the mode. Everyone else has to pay $10. To top it off, EA forgot to put the codes in with the Australian versions of the game, and in the PAL versions, the codes didn't unlock everything they said they were going to. So this brings up two problems in the future:

1. From Madden 10 we learn that EA can advertise a brand new feature to help sell it's game, a defining feature mind you, and then remove it from the disc to use for it's fight against used game sales. Now a buyer deciding whether to buy used or new doesn't even know about this code unless they frequent online forums and heard about it, so it's not even a choice they were allowed to make. They could unsuspectingly buy used figuring the feature is there, get home, pop the disc in, and be in for a wicked surprise.

2. There can be blunders in manufacturing and things like codes can be lost or have printing errors. EA has shown an inability already to keep it consistent and it can happen again. This is the link for how EA fixed it for those customers. It involves a long arduous process to get a code back. Just so everyone knows how EA treats "their" buyers. 

The real issue here isn't that a couple of extra maps may or may not be on the disc. The real issue is these maps may have once been a portion of the game and were removed to further this agenda. That's how it happened with Madden. It may not be how it is with Bad Company 2, but if this feature continues to catch on and have support, then we may very well get more Madden-like situations in EA's products, where an advertised feature or mode you would expect in game is all of a sudden left out and used as a "bonus" for new game buyers. It could lead to a game like the new Medal of Honor to require codes to unlock certain online game modes, like capture the flag or whatever, and be day and date with the game. That could be the new "bonus".

::nod::  I won't argue that.  I won't argue that content that normally would have been included on the disk or part of the core game could become 'bonus' or 'extra' content.  Even if that is the case on a certain game, or even becomes the norm, I don't have a problem with that.  As long as they follow the model of all that content being no charge to the person who bought the game new.

Kasz seemed to try to beat to death the notion that the 'extra' content is not, or will not be in future games, 'extra' content.  Yeah, I get that, and see that could happen.  But, in this model being used for BBC2, it doesn't matter either way to me, same game content or extra game content still will be no extra charge to the new game buyer.

I am all for a new game buyer just having to pay the new game price and nothing more and then the used game buyer having to pay the publisher/developer for portions of the game.