As part of a concentrated effort to keep second-hand sales low, EA plans to continue dropping unique content delivery services -- like the ones present in Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 -- into its games through fiscal 2011.
Speaking during the recent financial conference call, EA CFO Eric Brown said as much, adding that these services "benefit" original purchasers: "In fiscal 11, we will continue to introduce new service and product features that benefit the unique registered purchasers on PC and console games. Our most recent example is the Cerberus content network introduced with Mass Effect 2."
Later in the call, EA COO John Schappert said that all of EA's fiscal 2011 titles will "have an online component, both downloadable content and online play." We'll take this to mean you'll probably want to steer clear of the "Used" aisle in order to access the full EA.com sign-in experience.
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Contest:
6:30 PM on 02.08.2010
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Fuck you, EA.
Oh noes, your small investment will be worthless after only 3 years! How will you live?
Bravo!
The anti-DLC whiners weren't terribly entertaining but fuck 'em. If it's free I'm game.
But after the massive headache that was EA and Cerberus connectivity, I'm a little weary of this whole content portal shenanegan. Why not just use XBL/PSN codes? Why not just do it the way every game has since launch?
Is there some kind of drastic benefit that makes it worth the added headache on my end? Because if not, fuck EA.
Theoretically, if you can connect to EA servers, it eliminates the hassle of codes. That way it's (theoretically) easier to gets bunches of DLC like ME2 did in the first week.
Of course that's assuming you don't have connectivity issues. I haven't but if you have I can see your pain.
I wonder if this will affect Rock Band. Hmm.
Well they could theoretically release said content for free over XBL/PSN as free DLC. But I suppose then there would be no incentive for you to pay for a new copy of the game. As it stands, the Cerberus network seems 90 percent focused on getting you to buy a new copy of the game, rather than used.
While I get that, understand it and all, it seems kind of BS that if you pick up the game used, or get it off a friend or something, you're forced to spend 1200 points solely to get the DLC portal. In theory, if I bought ME2 used and had any kind of DLC codes, I'd have to pay the 15 bucks in order to redeem any of it.
By the same token, if you buy a used copy of a collector's edition that had the one-time-use codes used up, you'd probably think "This is the price of buying used."
Same here. And it isn't preventing you from buying used games, it's making up the difference from the used sales.
The amount of money lost to developers because of used sales is crushing. It's a smart business move. It helps recover from the used phenomenon, while also providing the end-user with an extremely beneficial arrangement. Both parties win. Besides, I'm willing to wager that most people who come to DTOID are early adopters, anyway, so it's essentially bitching just to bitch.
I mean, if you seriously wanted to save money on games, you wouldn't buy used, you'd buy from Toys R' Us, Best Buy, or Wal*Mart. They don't even sell used product (to qualify that, Best Buy no longer sells used in my area), and nine times out of ten, they sell new games for much cheaper than GameStop's used items, be it through promotions or just straight up pricing. So you can't even claim it's hitting you in your pocket, really.
How dare you dirty, dirty mom'n'pop games stores try to profit off used games. You should be happy with the pittance we give you per copy of our games sold while trying to keep your stores open.
I know they're thinking in the back of their heads that this is going to discourage piracy, but c'mon, pirates are way more resilient than that.
All this does is make me see EA as a company that releases unfinished products, pardon me if that doesn't entice me to do business with them.
Concerning the costs, they have already announced that everything on the Cerebus Network will be totally free, which is beyond awesome. They are already dropping some free armor and weapons tomorrow. I hope they keep this up and other publishers follow suite by encouraging their developers to implement similar systems and support gamers after a game hits the shelves.
EA is going to save gaming. Some my disagree, by I will always vote EA over ActiVison.
Why would you not want it? It could play exactly like ME2, except you'd have friends playing the other two characters in your party. Nothing has to change at all. See RE5 for single to multi-play being identical (in the story mode obviously).
It would be fucking awesome.
The massive explosion of used sales is a really shitty deal for the companies who made the initial investments, and who employ the creative people who actually made the games in the first place.
The use of "included free downloads" (availible at a price otherwise) seems to me a pretty cunning way to discourage the pawnshop BS from the pre-owned retailers and incentivize retail purchases.
I mean, the PSPGo flopped, so you can see the market isn't ready to go to an all-download all-the-time format (and thats probably for the best), but this technique seems less draconian.
EB, Gamestop, et allia are really cockblocking the revenue stream by charging nearly-full-retail-price for pre-owned games, and pocketing all the cash themselves. They can fornicate themselves with an iron stick IMO.