EA Sports Ponders “Subscription Programs”
Two years ago, during my Next-Gen Infowar article series, I outlined how Electronic Arts was buying up the rights to publish many of the top games of this generation, and even the next-generation, and what EA’s endgame might be. It became clear when researching EA, especially when looking at how they absolutely refused to support Xbox Live until they could use their own servers, that EA’s ultimate goal is to gain enough support and franchises so that they can justify charging to play their games online, especially their sports line-up. Since two years ago, EA has gone on to buy up more developers and more franchises, like BioWare (Mass Effect trilogy) and Pandemic (Mercenaries 2).
Earlier today, the news hit that during yesterday’s EA conference call, EA Sports President Peter Moore briefly mentioned concepts the studio is considering for the future of their various titles. Moore stated they were looking at instituting “subscription programs” to the EA Sports library in order to “take advantage” of customer loyalty.
The fact that EA is looking at this “concept” is no surpise, but it falls in line with their past behavior and their agenda for the future.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
but cleric its all about “customer loyalty” they said. they dont just want our money just to have it, they wanna make things better with it. its EA were talking about here, there good down to earth people just doing the right thing…FUCK EA!!!!!!!! all there games suck anyways. except the NFS games.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I used to l love NFS back in 97-98, but for the last few years, the games have been repackaged as rap music videos, and along with that, the EA AI system and its rubberband-style difficulty, kills any type of fun I can have with it.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:07 am
Bite My Balls EA.
I’ve seen EA crap on Gamers since the Sega genesis days, welcome to 2008 where the next round of getting screwed is in the name of LOYALTY.
What Cleric describes as Rubberband AI, other refer to it as Ketchup AI. KetchUp AI is where you can blow the AI competition outta the water, and yet on the last lap or near round completion the AI all of the sudden does a Ketch-up to you.
NFS is fantastic,,,,when you upload your own music and mute the in-game C-Rap provided. Early Sega versions of NFS along with style of gameplay I thought long ago were forgotten. Those police chases and cops vs. robbers were a blast.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:20 am
What sucks is that Burnout has now been disgraced by the EA AI. All EA games have that type of cheaply made, fun/competition killing AI in them too. I’ve also noticed all EA games have this same kind of haze or blur to them…if you’ve played a lot of EA games, you know what I mean.
A couple of years ago, Twisted and I referred to this as the “EA Effect”, and I feel sorry for any developer that has their game tainted by it. It’s like when EA buys up a franchise or a developer, they copy down their AI and visual style over and make them paste it into their game.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Burnout Revenge was the last of my tolerance in the series, Burnout is dead to me.
For the record, I’ve never liked Peter Moore or the direction he took the Xbox Console. Now that Peter Moore is leading the direction at EA, none of this surprises me the least.
EA gives us the Peter once again.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Apparently Mercenaries 2 (published by EA) will have in-game advertisements. That doesn’t seem to be a big deal for some but for me that’s a deal-breaker. I’ll probably buy that one used.