EA Sports Planning Subscription Service

movingtables · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:58

http://www.pastapadre.com/2011/04/22/ea-sports-planning-subscription-service

just noticed this info floating about.
so if for example you have an xbox360 and pay for Xbox live
you will have to pay 2 subs to play tiger woods online lol.
there was only one decent thing to this, that if you have downloadable content
such as extra courses for a tiger woods game then those courses can be carried
over to the following years release.

hmm, thoughts ?

K1LLSW1TCH · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:09

DO NOT WANT. If this ever becomes the case I will simply stop playing.

Andybtsn · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:10

I thought Microsoft said they'd never allow this with the COD series? What's the difference?

Psycho Sonny · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:14

it says nothing about paying to play online, your paying for free DLC and movable DLC from 1 gen to the next.

i dont like th idea of a subscription though, i dont see why they would even think its a good idea, less people would buy their games so any money made from the subs would be negated.

justin3208 · 23 Apr 2011 at 03:40

adding subs to ea games is a step that probably is enivitable, the profits the likes of activision/blizzard are making is one huge reason why they would want the top earning brands to go this way.

i seriously hope they dont as im a fan of how the fifa series has improved recently and i need my footy games every year lol

buchtis · 23 Apr 2011 at 03:44

Excellent. Now all the other companies can jump on the band wagon. Activision has been talking about the possibility of this for a while, they've seen how much World Of Warcraft rakes in and want a slice of the pie, greedy *******'s.

adam cool dude · 23 Apr 2011 at 06:20

I would only condone this if it was like world of warcraft. For example a monthly subsription of a FPS would mean new weapons, maps etc being released on a regular basis for free.

movingtables · 23 Apr 2011 at 09:05

conveniently for me i despise online gameplay these days.

Biz.Kid09 · 23 Apr 2011 at 09:26

If it meant they sorted the hackers, servers and scammers on Fifa then i would be half tempted to pay.
Fifa is getting ruined by these things with people regularly being cut off during games, scammed by fellow users (Not much they can do really i guess) and people hacking the games to cause freezing and glitching.

dannyjo22 · 23 Apr 2011 at 11:10

I would be happy for a subsciption service if the main game was £10-20 and the online features a fee. I'd be happy for all online games to go pay per play. Say £2-£3 a month.

It would get the majority of kids off games they shouldn't be playing in the first place.

It would make sure games are fixed online faster. What happens now on xbox is games are released with a tagged on multiplayer. The MP is invariably tagged on broken **** that they have showcased for months to help sell the game and is actually a broken load of old turd.

If they were selling the game for £20 and picking the rest up pay per play. Not only would they have to up the standard they would also have to monitor and fix the game for the community to carry on getting the £2-£3 a month.

Gears 2 would have been fixed a hell of a lot quicker had Epic been forced to care for continued revenue. Or like the PS3 release of Blops, people would have voted with their feet and wallets. Treyarch would have got that sorted fast and had to offer a sweetener to get the communuity back on side.

As I say if the main game is cheaper it's fair.

Realistically it won't make any difference to me. In 5 years of live use there are very few games with MP that I have played longer than a month online.

GRAW
Gears 1
COD4
MW2
PES6

orderoftheflame · 23 Apr 2011 at 11:50

I'd be against an subscription if it was mandatory for online play.

However, I don't think that's what EA are aiming at. That's not what the article from the OP is pointing out.

Bonus features for optional subscribers. More akin to PSN+ than Live.

Twentyone · 23 Apr 2011 at 12:11

^ That doesn't look to bad.

However I wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually did make all games needing a subscription as well as buying the game.

I'm a bit confused though as the article about it that I read on Gamespot I think said that EA is planning to make some kind of cross linking of games so that it's all tied to one account. But isn't there already something like that in place? I know I had to link mine up to my EA account. Most recent one being ME2

RuMp3l4$k1n · 23 Apr 2011 at 12:58

I can see myself paying if this was applied to Ultimate Team in FIFA as I have dropped a fair few MSP on that already. I can see them giving subscribers packs/players exclusive cups, higher coins reward rates etc.

K1LLSW1TCH · 23 Apr 2011 at 13:37

My worry is that they take features out which are currently free and they then apply them to subscribers only, leaving the player with the choice of either playing with a lot of missing features, or paying for the subscription.

RuMp3l4$k1n · 23 Apr 2011 at 13:40

I wouldn't be surprised to see UT go back to being a paid addon like it was the last 2 years just to include it in this subscription service.

Spirited · 23 Apr 2011 at 15:41

The "slippery slope" applies here guys.

I'm an ex Everquest 1/2 player. SoE implemented a 'cash shop' which, they always promised, would just offer fluff/fun stuff like illusion potions, unique character titles and the like. But over time, they slowly added game imbalancing stuff, like xp potions, mounts, equipment etc.

Like it or not, there is a market for this sort of thing, otherwise it would not exist. I happen to hate it, but i realise developers/publishers want to extract more money from the gamer, and they know they can get away with it.

You will eventually be looking at cash shops in other genres of gaming apart from mmo's, and the guy who's willing to pay the most money will have the best gear.

Really, all of this can be traced back to whats called the "secondary market" - or gold sales - thats plagued MMO's for years. The notion of a player buying their way to leetness. The game developers have been watching, and taking notes. They've realised us players are not only willing to pay for the game, the expansions and the subscriptions. They know we'll pay for other stuff too. So they've been thinking "we should get a piece of that pie too". And the one to blame aren't the companies offering such services, its the gamers that pay for it. If you've ever bought gold, or characters, or power leveling services, thanks a lot, *******.

It's coming, you can bet your life on it.

craptakular · 23 Apr 2011 at 15:46

Don't you guys already pay a yearly subscription for each game you buy?

i.e. you spend £30 on a fifa rehash every year.

Psycho Sonny · 23 Apr 2011 at 15:47

K1LLSW1TCH said:
My worry is that they take features out which are currently free and they then apply them to subscribers only, leaving the player with the choice of either playing with a lot of missing features, or paying for the subscription.

+1

im thinking this is what they are planning on, they are a business after all and money is the only thing on their minds, i wouldnt mind paying a small sub, since psn is free, and i only play a a few select titles nowadays, but if they all changed to this, then i'd go back to pc gaming.

Psycho Sonny · 23 Apr 2011 at 15:48

Oxy said:
Don't you guys already pay a yearly subscription for each game you buy?

i.e. you spend £30 on a fifa rehash every year.

that isnt a sub, its a completely new game, with new features.

a sub is like WOW, where your paying a certain amount on a regular basis, i can choose not to buy fifa 12 and continue to play fifa 11 for free.

craptakular · 23 Apr 2011 at 15:52

Psycho Sonny said:
that isnt a sub, its a completely new game, with new features.

a sub is like WOW, where your paying a certain amount on a regular basis, i can choose not to buy fifa 12 and continue to play fifa 11 for free.

I wouldn't call it a new game, just new kits and some transfers added in, hardly warrants £30+ each year. Then they change the way you take a penalty and release it.