Electronic Arts has been loving the idea of turning games into ongoing "services" for a while, and it appears to be drawing a lot of inspiration from Activision's Call of Duty Elite. Praising the rival's service, CEO John Riccitiello says we can expect a lot more similar services soon. Lovely.
"When we look at what we do and what our competitors do, there are a number of examples of [what] I would call the best work of our industry in terms of making this work," he said during an earnings call. "Frankly, I gave a compliment to one of our competitors. It's got a subscription on the back end of an FPS title. I think that's a best-in-class performance.
"And we study all of these, and by way of example, when we put [FIFA] Ultimate Team out there, we had a competing idea with Madden, none of which I'm sure -- none of whom I believe on the call would even know the name of it because it quickly faded and it was replaced with Ultimate Team because we're learning from best practice.
"So the reason this is such a fast-growing revenue stream for us is we're identifying and implementing best practice across the range of our products, and you'll see lots more to come including an announcement near term that Peter just alluded to."
Hooray for subscriptions! I'll add that to the collector's editions, pre-order bonuses, launch-day DLC, post-launch DLC, online passes and season passes.
Remember when a games made money off the strength of them being games?
EA Praises Call of Duty Elite, Battlefield Subscription Next? [Industry Gamers]
Contest:
10:00 AM on 02.03.2012 | 
Somehow, this is less crazy and more acceptable than Activision's hopes and dreams.
Games are better than ever and cost more than ever to make (I assume), so some of this stuff really can't be all that surprising.
Yeah, yeah I realize prices and popularity have also increased, but have they done so at the same rate of dev cost? Someone find out and tell us! Journalism!
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whatever makes the most money,
not what's good for their customers.
John Riccitiello
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asshole
- A fanatic Donald Duck reader
I've been gaming since before I can remember and not once have I even paid for a month trial of a game.
Activision has created a major source of income with a service that doesn't even work properly.
So far, Elite has offered:
Stat tracking that sometimes seems to just make up numbers
Contests where the top places are overrun by obvious boosters
A game security exploit
Activision spreading its work force even thinner, with a game that is already riddled with problems, botched fixes, and patch delays.
You do get DLC maps early and for less, but even that has complaints. People are complaining about the lack of modes available on the new maps, which has happened because Activision split their fanbase further. (Instead of just the will and won't buy, now they have the Elites, the will buy as two-month later DLC, and the won't buy at all.) People are complaining because Elite access is tied to a user account and not a console, so in a family situation anyone who wants to use Elite maps has to have bought an Elite subscription. And people are complaining that the DLC maps aren't even that good. (Mind, people complain the MW3 maps in general are poor.) And complain that this time it isn't just map packs, but mixing in Spec Ops missions and even "game modes" as DLC content.
I read the collection too, is beatifull.
holy fucking shit this guy's a scumbag
So yeah, not a surprise. EA doesn't care how it gets it's money.
You won't have me, and more are waking up.
go eat yourself ea
Look games industry, if your game is gonna cost me 80-120 dollars, just fucking tell me upfront do I can make an informed buying decision.