Well damn. I'm a bit torn with this measure.

On one hand:

• EA will be able to make money from used purchases. Lots of publishers are hurting, and this is their attempt to deal with it.
• Will make buying new more attractive by making the used alternative worse, and therefore make people think twice about buying used.
• Will hopefully curtail the number of suckers who currently pay $55 for used games from Gamestop.
• They are being upfront about the changes.

On the other:

• Multiple gamers who use the same system need to purchase seperate IDs. This sucks for households where multiple people play the same game online.
• Want to lend Madden to your friend? He won't be able to play online unless he pays.
• Gamestop is for this, meaning they just have one more thing to bundle on to the sale of used EA sports game.
• Xbox owners who buy a used EA Sports game now need to pay for their internet connection, Xbox Live Gold account, and an EA online pass to play the game they paid for online. Pretty absurd.
• EA only keeps servers for lots of their online games running for 15 months. If they are charging for online play, does that mean online servers will stay online longer? I really doubt it.
• This is basically console games moving toward the PC system of CD keys. With online PC games, resale value is junk because of non-transferable cd-keys.

Pretty interesting though.

I'm pretty sure they already did this with NBA 10 this year. To download new rosters and such you needed to register the game with a code.

Guess i'll buy Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 then... And since 2k > live and I'm not good enough at madden to play online i'll be ok...

Wow.

 I agree.

Bleh, no thank you.

I've read some PC developers mention before on the cost of multiplayer. Sometimes it can cost as much as a 1/3 of developing time/cost. In a lot of cases only a small faction of players  will ever spend time in playing online while most will play SP or local multiplayer. I think it's fair to make those who want to play online to at least buy a new copy to support the high developing cost of  online multiplayer. For the majority who doesn't  care to play online a used copy will do just fine.

If the value of used game purchases decreases, so too will the value of new purchases.
It seems to me in most instances, new PC games are cheaper than their console counterparts.

This also appears close to Sony's patented process of locking a game to a single console.
Ironically, Gamestop opposed that to the point of threatening not to sell the PS3.

Finally, did anyone notice that this seems not to apply to the Wii?

Mike from Morgangtown

Wow my hate grows for EA every day.

EA just surpassed Activision in the stupid asshole department.

ameratsu - Gamestop is for this, meaning they just have one more thing to bundle on to the sale of used EA sports game.


This is a very important point. This won't hurt Gamestop. They'll pay less for used copies of these games, sell them for $45 instead of $55 but with a $10 voucher for the online. In effect still selling them for $55 and probably making the same profit.

No harm to the person buying used. Still paying $55 and getting the exact same value.

It only hurts the person who bought new and then sold as they'll get significantly less now for that copy. I don't think I'm opposed to that. Seems fair enough. However it might hurt new sales as those people will not think of a $60 game as a $60 - $30 resell = $30 game, it'll be $60 - $20 resell = $40 game and it might not be worth that much to them.

In the end that's EA's problem.