"Do I like paying for Xbox Live and Online Pass?'

This is the problem I see with this if it's on the Xbox side of things. That yearly fee is supposed to cover the online component of the games and console. The fee was supposed to be a centralizing payment so we weren't paying and managing reoccurring fees for every game we took online and could have one ID across those games. This is eroding that goal. For some reason, EA has always gotten special treatment on Live. They are allowed to turn off their game servers pretty much whenever they want. I could see turning off the online tourneys so people buy the new game for the newer features, but why can't I play my friend in an online exhibition match in FIFA World Cup 2006 (a favorite while we were in college) via P2P because the game can't access EA's servers in 2009 well before the next true version of the game is out? Why am I paying my Xbox Live fee for if my games can't get online?

I don't really buy used games ever. If I know that I will spend a considerable amount of time with a game, I'll be sure to buy it. But what about game rentals? Gamefly can't be too happy about this. And they are simply buying the games in large numbers (and not at a wholesale discount I hear) so they have stock to rent to people. And maybe I subscribe to their service to play a shorter game that I would not have otherwise bought because it would sit on my shelf after playing it for a week (or gone up on Ebay as a used game!) But my Gamefly subscription keeps them in business so they can buy new games in bulk that people won't buy otherwise, and now some of those will be incomplete games since they don't come with the case and subsequent code.

Hey Tommy,

As noted in the link to the original Online Pass news story, you get a seven-day free pass. So if you rent a game, you get a week's worth of online time for a game.

Kris,

I couldn't agree more with your sentiment. While it feels raw to be charged for something that's been included as part of the package for years, as a gaming industry professional, I feel for the developers and publishers who need and want to reap some benefits from the used games markets.

Let's be honest, if it's a small independent studio that makes this change, the general mindset would feel very different. EA's history makes this decision looks filthy as they have given themselves much bad press over the years for being a "corporate machine" in the gaming industry.

The bottom line is that design studios and publishers need more business or the industry will not grow and so EA and others will continue to devise ways to increase their profits. What I think could have been done better is instead of EA coming out and saying, "We deserve to be compensated for our work" and giving off the corporate juggernaut image, is to create a solution or to at least improve their situation but trying to take into consideration the gaming public rather than just their shareholders.

Why not drop the cost of their sports titles by $10? Make every sports game $49.99 and do not include the online features. Make the consumers pay $10 straight to their pockets for the online features. It's not like annual sports titles have big-risk development costs, constant growth and shrinking of the design team, or highly fluctuating sales each year. If any business models could support this change, I believe it's the yearly sports releases.

Many would argue that sports game change so little from year to year that $60 per game is too much anyway. By piggy-backing a $10 fee on top of a new and used game sale, you guarantee $10 of untouched revenue for everyone person who plays online. I do not think it's a stretch to say that most sports gamers play online so the overall number of only $50 new game sales wouldn't kill their profit. This would also change their trade-in and used sales value at places like GameStop which would help alleviate the outcry from having to pay an extra $10 for online features.

Now, this doesn't create a solution for people who use services like Gamefly or other long term rental options. Maybe offering a yearly Online Pass for all of their sports titles? This bug is a little tougher to squash but there is room to create solutions.

In the end, I think EA should adopt an approach that not only increases their bottom line but also takes the consumer's needs and perception into account. I agree with their position of wanting to create revenue from used sales but their way of doing it strikes me and way others of simply corporate bull&@#*$. Working together with the buying public would go a long way to changing the image they have created for themselves.

This is BS. Whichever way you cut it, your still paying extra to play multiplayer. Xbox Live subsciptions to play something that's already part of a game is barely tolerable, but paying again to play the game is crap.

I don't see a vantage point where you could defend this. It's just hurting the consumer, and the bit about how "devs lose money" doesn't really apply.

If you actually work in this industry for a major company, many of the teams don't care if you buy the game used or not because often times if your game is good, the player will buy the sequel when it comes out or the DLC.

Awkward rant over. Scotty, fire up the backlash.

OK, I'll admit I forgot about the 7 day trial when I read the original announcement a few days ago. Maybe this works for renting sports games and you can try out the online component, but what about when they start putting this in other games when online is maybe integral to the the single player (Demon's Souls comes to mind). And not just for rentals. Thinking beyond sports games with yearly iterations, what about a story driven game where you get into it maybe by the third one in the series (Mass Effect 2 and the cerebrus network?), and can't find a new copy of the first one anymore? Now I'm being punished because I didn't know the series was good until the third game got a lot of buzz? Now you have to pay a fee on top of your Live fee for online? Like I said, on the Xbox side of things that already has a centralized online yearly fee, it doesn't sit well with me.

Here are my thoughts on the situation.

There is no reason for EA to charge extra for online outside of getting a cut of used games sales. No reason at all.

People might claim that it is to support the servers for all those players but that is not so.

Let's say that EA sells 10 million new copies of Madden. They have to maintain servers that can support those 10 million players. The cost of supporting those players was taken from the initial sale. For brevity's sake it will be $10 out of the $60 or $100 million. This goes toward supporting the servers for 2 years as that is most likely when they will shut off the servers for this year's game.

Now let's say that 1 million of those original customers sell the game and 500 thousand people buy the game used? So how many people does EA need to support? No it is not 10.5 million players, it is now 9.5 million. So the cost of maintaining the servers just dropped. So the original $100 million server support just got a little wiggle room because it no longer has to support as many players.

Finally, we get to a year later when all but 1 million players sell their copy to get the newest version so that original $100 million only has to support 1 million players at this point. So the cost of supporting the online play has actually dropped over time.

The number of players that the online mode needs to support will only drop as time goes on. That number will never exceed the number of new copies sold. So really there is no need to charge used purchasers as the cost of them playing the game has already been covered by the initial new purchase.

@Ephraim---Wonderful comment, because mine was most likely less defined.

To further expand on my comment, here is a quick chart of what I mean. The number of players are estimated based on people selling their copy and others buying used. I am not taking in account further new copies sold after the initial 10 million. The cost per month per player is taking $10/24 months. The Cost per month is the number of players that month * cost per month per player.

Each column is defined as:
Month - Num Players - Cost Per Month Per Player - Cost Per Month
1 - 10000000 - 0.416 - 4160000
2 - 10000000 - 0.416 - 4160000
3 - 9500000 - 0.416 - 3952000
4 - 9000000 - 0.416 - 3744000
5 - 8500000 - 0.416 - 3536000
6 - 8000000 - 0.416 - 3328000
7 - 7500000 - 0.416 - 3120000
8 - 7000000 - 0.416 - 2912000
9 - 6500000 - 0.416 - 2704000
10 - 6000000 - 0.416 - 2496000
11 - 5500000 - 0.416 - 2288000
12 - 1000000 - 0.416 - 416000
13 - 900000 - 0.416 - 374400
14 - 850000 - 0.416 - 353600
15 - 800000 - 0.416 - 332800
16 - 750000 - 0.416 - 312000
17 - 700000 - 0.416 - 291200
18 - 650000 - 0.416 - 270400
19 - 600000 - 0.416 - 249600
20 - 550000 - 0.416 - 228800
21 - 500000 - 0.416 - 208000
22 - 450000 - 0.416 - 187200
23 - 400000 - 0.416 - 166400
24 - 350000 - 0.416 - 145600

Total 2 year cost - $39,936,000

So the original $100 million was never actually used to support the online mode of the game. So what does the $10 online pass go to but EA's profit margin.

@ Ephriam Knight

You are also assuming all 10 million 'new' people even take their game online, which is hardly the case :)

@Tommy,

But EA needs to be able to support a possible 10 million players whether that happens or not. They have to have the capacity to support everyone that bought their game. It is like guarantees. The provider of the product has to have enough money behind the guarantee to replace or repair every one of the products sold whether they use it or not.

>> There is no reason for EA to charge extra for online outside of getting a cut of used games sales. <<
Paging Captain Obvious, to the thread please!

Of course its to get a cut of used game sales. The Gamestops and such are absolutely raping game publishers blind on second hand sales. Have you even tried to buy a new game from them recently? You have to *talk them into it*.

This is really a non-issue. I mean outside of hardcore gamer forums, theres absolutely no awareness of this as an issue at all. And if people do start seeing the user versions of games as having less value its all to the good - for game *customers* as well as developers. It's *really* not in game customers interests that game developers don't get paid for their work.

@Ephraim

That's awesome that you can use imaginary numbers "The cost of supporting those players was taken from the initial sale. For brevity's sake it will be $10" then use them to prove your point "So the original $100 million was never actually used".

---

I don't think EA is totally out of line here. I look at it this way. If the average person plays online for x number of hours, no problem, the cost of that is factored into the original game. Now, for each additional person who buys the used game, that's x more hours of online play that were never factored into the original cost.

So simply enough, used game sales = additional online play costs. Would you prefer it if EA were to factor in potential used sales into the original cost of the game? Maybe you should pay $5 more dollars for a game, just in case you want to sell it later? Somehow I doubt people would like that better.

I feel sort of strange defending EA, but in the spirit of this article, it does seem that people have knee-jerk hate to anything big publishers do. If you just automatically hate everything, that makes your opinions totally bogus.

@Joe:
"The Gamestops and such are absolutely raping game publishers blind on second hand sales."

That is like saying that use car dealers are raping toyota by selling used toyotas!

one argument is that:
there are cost associated with allowing people to play online with a game that you are not making a dime on cause they bought it used.

the response to that is:
Yes but you sold the game originally and it is still only one person playing it. it is not like the original purchaser is still playing it so technically there are no increased cost for EA by over the original one player per copy built into the price of these games.

But pretty much I have to agree that it is pretty much just greed of upper management trying to increase profits for shareholders.

Personally I think that there should be a ban on this type of thing. I mean If you buy a used camary Should you then have to pay a fee to Toyota to be able drive it?

And to add to my inflammatory rant, a recurring theme is to hear how people are outraged at how a company wants to make profits off their products, such as James' quote above: "it is pretty much just greed of upper management trying to increase profits for shareholders."

Companies want to make money. As much as possible. This is what companies do, especially big corporate companies.

It's this simple - if you like what you're getting for your money, buy the product. If you don't, don't buy the product. Why all the hate?

@Max Morrison: The drop $10 make everyone pay it method doesn't work as well as this, because then buyers of new games will bitch and moan about being inconvenienced due to used game buyers (or pirates, people like to blame them too). And unless you had a giant sticker that took up half the box front, people will miss the fine print and complain to EA about being unethical and not being up front with the true costs of the game or some shenanigans.

[sarcasm]Besides, now new game buyers are getting something of value for free! Extra bullet point on the back of the box.[/sarcasm]

@Ephriam Knight: EA doesn't need to be able to support that many people online at once. It's like the downloadable Battlefield game that came out, they was all like "holy cow, this is way more popular than we expected wink wink nudge nudge" then finally after release did the more server thing. If their statistics says only 2/3 of their new sales translates into online gamers, you can bet your ass they're not going to have infrastructure to handle the other 1/3, 'cause adding more severs is 'spensive; ie, it's less expensive to add more to get to the amount needed then to overestimate and have to get rid of some due to having more than necessary.

@James Barnette: The car analogy doesn't work in this case; used car sales actually help the manufacturer, because you'll likely need to service it, and even if you don't go to Toyota, guess who the only guy who makes Toyota parts is? Even better, building a car with just parts is loads more expensive then buying a whole new car, because the cost of the parts is inflated when you buy them individually. So don't worry, Toyota and other car companies are getting their fair share out of their used market.

"But EA needs to be able to support a possible 10 million players whether that happens or not. They have to have the capacity to support everyone that bought their game. It is like guarantees. The provider of the product has to have enough money behind the guarantee to replace or repair every one of the products sold whether they use it or not."

When is this ever true? Look at Xbox Live during Christmas 2007. The service was down for weeks because they didn't build the infrastructure to support the people that bought their system that holiday season. And by your "guarantee" model, then every internet provider would have the bandwidth to support every customer using their full bandwidth at the same time. But get online at 5pm during a work day and odds are you won't be getting your full potential speed.

EA, like other companies, look at projected sales, estimate that maybe 60% of people who buy the game go online with it, and build the backend for that 60%. Then when say 75% get online the first day, servers crash, no one can get on, and EA has to issue a statement, get more servers, and then talk up how great their product is because more people used a component of it than they planned for. Recent case in point, the COD: MW 2 map pack launch. Oh, you want an EA example you say? Remember the first few days after Battlefield 1943 came out a few months ago? Same thing. Good call Sean.

I don't think this charge for content is necessarily "wrong." If it were a game I wanted to play, from a company I wanted to support, and if I thought the price was worth it - I would do it. But in this case, I do not personally enjoy sports games, I do not want to support EA, and I could pick up Left4Dead for under $10 during one of Steam's sales... or play D&D online for free... or play FFVI which I already own... there are so many ways to provide entertainment for myself without supporting this right now.

@Sean

"The car analogy doesn't work in this case; used car sales actually help the manufacturer, because you'll likely need to service it, and even if you don't go to Toyota, guess who the only guy who makes Toyota parts is?"

Couldn't you make this argument with DLC? I mean, you can buy the used game, but I don't think used DLC exists, at least not yet.

I'm actually really impressed by the value that EA is adding to their product here. They've given me yet another incentive to never buy one of their sports games, FOR FREE (not that I really needed one).

I have the opposite argument. :)
Will EA give me back $10 since I will never use the code because I do not play online? :) I would love to pay $49.99 for the same game without the online pass on it. How about trying that EA?

The thing that sucks the most is EA servers have and always will suck. I do not buy their sports games and most likely never will but I just bought Skate 3 and every day I have played it have had problems connecting to EA Nation. The game came with codes to unlock stuff and for the first day I could not use the code because I could never connect. Every single time I start the game up I get some error about EA Nation. I actually support the idea of codes for new games that give you that little bit extra, I despise Game Spot and constantly tell people to stay away. If you're gonna buy/sell a game, use Amazon or Ebay, at least you won't get ripped off.

Just wanted to point out (mainly towards sean lindskog and Tommy Hearns) that Ephraim's assumption of a 1:1 ratio of purchasers and online players and 2 full years of support would be considered conservative numbers, so if lindskog and Hearns are correct, then Ephraim's assertation is even *more* true, not less. If EA is, in reality, to support fewer players for 2 years, than even more of this money is for profit.

I like Max's idea of EA dropping the original price by $10 and making the online pass $10. It allows the sizable number of people who don't play online to save some money. As it is right now, people who only play offline are helping support the online players.

I'm of two minds about this. As a consumer I'm disappointed, but I've always felt that in a value for money sense developers who made great online games were getting ripped off by me. Many people have noted that video games provide great entertainment value for the money (of course these value calculuses are all bollocks, but still useful) versus movies. 10$ for 2 hours vs. 50$ for 1000s of hours. I paid $19.99 for Counter-strike back in the day and have probably spent more time playing it then I have on any other single entertainment property. Did the developers of that game deserve more money. Of course, we already know that cultivating an online community of players who are committed to your game will bring new players into the fold for years (so I was providing them value) and thus more money than a single-player game could hope to make, but in some ways I think that multiplayer games have always been devalued in terms of price vs. consumer benefit. MMOs seem to have reversed this valuation, and it seems like companies are looking at them and going, well there are as many people playing COD4 50 hours a week as there are playing WoW, so why don't we get them to pay subscription fees?

The whole used game thing is obviously the real play here, but I think there is some merit to their argument.

This has nothing to do with costs for supporting online or EA getting profits from used game sales. The whole point of this is to reduce the retailer's price of used games (currently $55). As those prices drop, due to the game missing the $10 online component, so will trade-in values. Ultimately, this new system is used to keep the first buyer's game from going back to the retailer since they'll get much less money for it now.

@Carl,

Thanks. I was just about to come on and say the same thing. If fewer people play online than purchased the game new, the support costs for online play are cheaper than what I described, thus adding to my argument that this is nothing more than a cash grab by EA.

Because everything in this life must be free.

Oh theres nothing wrong with EA's decision at all! Just, as a consumer, it kind of sucks that they finally decided to do it. But think about it. You bought the game used, and you expect to use EA's servers for online when they haven't benefited from it at all? That's kind of unfair for the business. It's not like it's a monthly fee. It's just one time fee. That's completely sensible.

@Aaron,

Perhaps you glazed over my posts, but you buying the game used is no additional burden on EA as they have already set aside the money to support you while you play.

Aren't (we) developers on the same side as a publisher in this specific business?

1. The used game market benefits no one but the seller. The rental companies have been buying new copies (often at wholesale prices), renting them, and then eventually selling them at a profit. And, they are still going out of business. Gamers sell their games for credits or cash. Again, big upside to the retail used game seller for almost no cost. How does a publisher or developer [including most of us on this thread] benefit from this? We don't, unless it's a hit game, and the rental or word of mouth helps a new sale...which is rare.
2. A used game plus online $10 pass is still substantially cheaper than $60.
3. EA and other publishers could sell a yearly subscription or perpetual key (eg. $20) for their online services related to their used games, thus providing revenue to offset whatever expenses exist. There are probably dozens of other creative solutions to extend online access to a new used game customer, while still benefiting the customer and creators.

I don't hear complaints about XLA at $100 per year for gold memberships, but PSN doesn't even charge for this. Where's that argument?

Game publishers and developers don't plan on supporting their games for free, after no money is being made on sales. They build their online costs into a retail model, and then release a game knowing what online support will be needed for 2-4 years. They don’t factor in the 2nd, used customer extending that Madden 2007 online need for another 10 years.

@Ephriam

Forgive me if I misread your comments or anything. I am at work at the same time. Anyway, you said that there is a decrease in players online I think. Online MMORPGS don't drop their prices though when the number of players are down. It's still always $14.99 and in the rare cases, older MMOs drop a price, to only $11.99 normally. I could be thinking off in left field though and completely some place else right now. Sorry if I am.

@Sean,

I wanted to reply directly to your comments:

"That's awesome that you can use imaginary numbers "The cost of supporting those players was taken from the initial sale. For brevity's sake it will be $10" then use them to prove your point "So the original $100 million was never actually used"."

The numbers are far from imaginary. If EA is selling the online pass for $10 to used buyers, it is completely justified to assume that is the cost to support that user for the life of the online portion of the game. The 2 year mark that I used was based on recent events of EA shutting down servers after roughly 2 years. With a yearly sports franchise, it would be a complete exaggeration to put up numbers for anything after 2 years.

"I don't think EA is totally out of line here. I look at it this way. If the average person plays online for x number of hours, no problem, the cost of that is factored into the original game. Now, for each additional person who buys the used game, that's x more hours of online play that were never factored into the original cost.

So simply enough, used game sales = additional online play costs. Would you prefer it if EA were to factor in potential used sales into the original cost of the game? Maybe you should pay $5 more dollars for a game, just in case you want to sell it later? Somehow I doubt people would like that better."

But that is x hours extended over the life of the online portion of the game. 2 years in this case. So let's say that the average person will play 120 hours of online play in the 2 years. Now that is the average. There are power players that will spend hundreds of hours online and people who will spend no time online. So the people who don't spend time online are comping the time of the power users. Is it that far fetched that the $100 million that I listed could comp the buyers of used games, especially if the total number of game owners decreases every month?

Also, did we already not have a price increase? Last generation, games were $50. This generation $60. People already complained and still do.

"I feel sort of strange defending EA, but in the spirit of this article, it does seem that people have knee-jerk hate to anything big publishers do. If you just automatically hate everything, that makes your opinions totally bogus."

Good thing I don't have knee jerk reactions nor hate everything that publishers do. I try to see where they are coming from. In this instance, I see no reason to justify the online pass for sports games. There is nothing in customer support or online support that would justify this additional charge that was not already comped by the original sale of the game.

@Aaron,

MMO's are a different beast. The Subscription fee is paid for current users. Meaning that if 9 million people are playing your game in one month you have 9 million people paying the fee to play that month.

While the monthly cost for the user doesn't go down, as the number of players drop, the total revenue and server cost decreases accordingly.

The EA online pass is like paying for 2 years of service upfront. Not by month. But it is subject to the same server costs, with just all the revenue gained upfront rather than on a monthly basis. So in this instance, as the number of online players drops each month, the total revenue stays the same while the server costs drop.

I hope that clarifies.

@Ephriam

That makes sense. But how else could EA profit? That may be true in what you say, but I still think EA should benefit somehow, especially if someone bought a used game and are accessing their servers. Maybe what they are doing is not the best way, but I wonder what other way could be done.

@Aaron,

Well in my response to Sean just above, I wrote that such used game purchasers would have their online play comped by those who play little or none online. As my chart showed that the costs of maintaining the servers drops with the number of players so they have plenty of leeway when it comes to supporting used purchasers. About $60 million of leeway. If they don't use all that, I don't know of any company that would not enjoy $60 million in profit. But that is only the left overs from the online portion, they also have the profit from the $50 left after taking out the $10 per game.

But don't let claims of profit fool you. This is not about getting profit. This is about get MORE profit. They could easily get more profit by cutting development costs, but they don't want to do that.

For every used purchase from Gamestop, eBay, Craigslist, etc, there is then one less original owner using the online "resources". So, this is just a bad excuse given by them to make more money.

The fact that they choose to make up reason here is more upsetting. Of course, saying, "We want more money" won't make any good press either.

These companies are leveraging their big-name games to try various schemes because they know many of their userbase will buy into it no matter what.

Ephriam,

Your argument is based around the costs of maintaining the online service. That if EA breaks even with used game players, then somehow anything more is a "cash grab".

There are far more things to consider than maintaining the online service. EA puts lots of money into the development of the multi-player, network, and server code, the physical hardware, any support infrastructure, and other significant up-front costs associated with developing this service.

A company makes this investment not with the intention to break even (or else they never would have done it), but to make a significant profit. They are not evil for doing so, and they are not evil for wanting money from used-game players who would otherwise benefit from their significant investment of developing the service (along with the maintenance costs) without paying any money to them at all.

I also think $60 is steep for an average price for a game. But at the same time, many game players demand the insane production values that drive that price. Just the other day I was watching a video review for Lost Planet 2, and the reviewer trashed the game because the characters "didn't blink" and have other facial animation. And this isn't even for an RPG, but a pretty straight up action shooter.

I'm not saying all people feel this way, but certainly many do.

@Sean,

But you are completely missing my point. Those that use little to no online play are comping those that do whether they are over users or used game purchasers. The chances of them not gaining a profit are pretty slim especially as online players will drop in number as time moves on.

All those upfront costs you describe are paid for through the initial sales of the game. Exactly like all other games ever made. If $600 million does not cover the costs of game development, development and maintenance of the multiplayer network, marketing, production and distribution and leave plenty of profit, you are doing something way wrong.

PS3!

Unfortunately, most people won't vote with their wallets and instead choose to pay. Activision got away with charging $15 for a map pack, EA will get away with this too.

I really am surprised that EA didn't pull this off earlier. I'm waiting for the MMO cost structure to hit sports games one day, the buy the game get 30 days free then a monthly cost for online play. Unlike MMO's though, I can't see what value EA could provide to equal $15 a month.

Publishers want a piece of the used game pie, and I can understand that. However, alot of potential customers trade in their games after finishing them, so they can buy new titles. Decisions like this may affect what those customers buy later down the road.

I wish publishers would look a lesser price point for certain titles. If a AAA game requires larger price tag so be it, but when a much smaller budget game is also the same price, how can they be surprised when it barely sells?

Well, you know it is true that when you buy a game used, someone already paid for that online usage fee that's in the intial retail price. So the person who no longer plays online is replaced by the new used buyer. There, nothing really has changed..

Hmm, so maybe EA is making a big cash grab.

Kris, you had me when you put the complaining down to an "entitlement" mentality...

...right up to the point where you insinuated that it was only PC gamers crying. "Notice here that most of these examples are of PC gamers getting 'screwed' by game companies. OOOHHH!"

PC gamers *are* getting screwed. Not through the imposition of new charges for existing functionality, but through crippled designs (compared to what could have run on the typical PC platform), half-ass ports of crippled designs, blame-the-innocent DRM schemes like Ubisoft's, and, ultimately, publishers who no longer even fund a PC version of a game at all.

You brought up EA's Madden NFL as an example of people crying for having to pay for online play. Fine... but EA stopped supporting the PC platform for Madden NFL a couple of years ago. PC gamers can't play the latest edition of this game -- online or offline -- even if they want to.

I agree that there is an entitlement mentality infecting the population these days, causing some people to believe they should be given stuff for free in areas ranging from "net neutrality" to online play modes.

But it's not coming solely or unjustifiably from PC gamers, who have demonstrably been getting the short end of the gaming stick for years now.

Hey Bart!

I actually stuck that part in there only half-jokingly. I do play quite a bit of PC games, too, so I recognize some of the PC gamer screw-age.

@Ephriam

i don't think I'm missing your point, I'm making a different point. ;) Which is that it's totally reasonable for a company to expect to make a profit off of ALL users who enjoy a service which was both expensive to develop, and expensive to maintain. While I could argue this should be true of all used game sales, I think it's particularly relevant in the case where a product involves an online service component.

You seem to be saying that a copy of any game must include a fully transferable and resalable license to use the service. There are many products (especially software) that do not allow transfer / resale of a service. It's fully up to the publisher to define this license, a non-transferable agreement is a totally valid business practice, and it's up to you the consumer to decide whether you want to buy it or not.

Anyway, despite the fact we obviously disagree, you've argued your side well. I gotta bail out and get some coding done. Thanks for the fun.

if the public has an entitlement mentality, its only because game makers have given it to them with free online play for years.

@Sean,

I understand your point a lot better now. I agree to an extent.

Yes game developers should research ways to earn money from all players of their game, but I don't think that charging players for something that has traditionally been free for years is the right way to go about it.

DLC is a great way to do it as that is additional content to the game. Charging for included components won't get many companies very far.

I can't wrap my head around the mentality of the industry right now. But one thing is clear, companies like EA and Activision are steering the entire industry towards its death. Every action they take either alienates or offends the core audience. How long do they think they can get away with it before the typical person becomes so alienated they just stop buying and playing games? If they push it to a breaking point, there will be no recovery. People won't simply come back after the fact.

Its time for all involved to pull their heads out of their asses. Stop trying to unbundle perceived problems onto the end user. Deal with the real problems and start by looking in the mirror. First and foremost, the industry has get past this concept that they are legally entitled to profits earned from used game sales. They never have been and they never will be. End of discussion. It's a white whale, stop chasing it or you risk destroying all the progress gaming has made in recent years.

Here's an inconvenient truth for the industry... the publishers are to blame for the growth of used game market, not GameStop. The used game market exploded when publishers raised the price of new games to $60. Despite appearances, people are not stupid. They know the vast majority of games are simply not worth the price. All GameStop has done is offer a slightly cheaper alternative. As long as new game prices remain prefixed and inflated, the used game market will exist despite any draconian actions taken by the publishers to destroy it. The publishers got greedy and it came back to bite them in the ass. Now deal with the mistake and start competing against GameStop instead of bitching about them. If the objective is to motivate people to buy new instead of used, it has to be accomplished through competition. Not by abusing and penalizing the consumer. New game prices have to be competitive with used game prices. Period. When the price difference between new and used is only $5 to $10, people will always buy new.

Here's another inconvenient truth... unless a title is a top 10 best seller, there is absolutely no valid reason why it should retail for more than $30 after it's been on the shelves for more than 6 months. Publishers have to start progressively lowering the price of games during the course of their shelf life. The game should sell at full retail price for the first 3 months. If it's not a best selling game after three months, as most aren't, lower the price to $40. After 6 months, lower the price to $30. Finally after 9 - 12 months lower the price to $20 for the remainder of the shelf life. Doing this would have a major impact on GameStop's used game sales. It would also give people more incentive to hold onto a game instead of trading it in. The longer people keep the games, the higher the chances are for DLC sales. In a capitalistic, free market system this is how you succeed or fail. The game industry just has to get over the sense of entitlement and wake up to the fact that they can't have their cake and eat it too.

@David

I can agree to what your saying. I have been saying that for a long time they just simplely slap the standard $59.99 fee on games when they really aren't worth it, and they will keep it there for months. Not that I care for MW2 at all, but they are still charging a high price for it. When COD4 came out it took almost a year it felt like for the game to at least go on a sale.

"On the other hand, I've only heard a lot of knee-jerk complaining, and no good argument as to why EA shouldn't do this."
Here is one argument : when you buy a game, you also buy the right to re-sale the game for a certain amount of money. Of course, that amount is never a given but one thing is sure, by removing the online component, EA is reducing by at least 10 dollars the amount of money i'll get from their games.
I don't really think that's a good or clever way to thank your honest first hand consumers and it also mean these first-hand consumers will have less money to buy new games.

@David, nice, someone with sense :)

It is all about perception of value, I often don't buy games when they first come out because I don't think it will be worth $60, but if I see it on sale will pick it up. Of course there are still games that I have to buy the second they come out but those are fewer and farther apart than they used to be.

I still buy used SNES games and it is crazy the variety in prices. I got Cybernator for $1.25 online through Amazon and yet I'll see people on CL wanting $20 for it. But the sad thing is, people will pay those high prices because they "Want" or "Need" that game, I once paid $60 on ebay for a copy of Bomberman that I "needed".

the first publisher who hacks 15$ off the price of their new games is gonna make a fortune. there are so many people out there who want more games but cant justify the 60 $ price tag.

if there is anything good about the terrible sales this year, its that game makers are taking a really hard look at the price of games.

I agree with David, and add that:


Always when I see complaining of used games because Gamestop sells them in the first week, all that I can say is:

Gamestop is selling, because someone sold it to them. If someone sold a new game to them in the first week, this mean that the game could not get their attention for one week. This mean, that YOU SUCK.

Seriously, Assassins Creed 1, 30 minute unskipable boring tutorial? Then the rest of the game is filled with repetitive missions? 60 USD FPS with 4 hour single player campaign (yes, that is MW2...)? And this go on...

I never saw Blizzard complaining of used sales of Warcraft III, or idSoft complaining of used sales of Doom 3, or Capcom complaining of Lost Planet...

These games, are not in the top 10 of metacritic, but they ARE fun, they DO GET attention. This is what developers are missing...

Your games, will not be available used, if noone sell them.

Likewise, buying games used, would not be needed if games were not a rip-off.

People say that Gamestop is a rip-off by asking 5 USD less... Really?

Let me see: The game (whatever one), is 50 USD. It is selling enough, to make Gamestop pay 10 USD when you sell it back. And actually, you don't bought it for 50 USD, but for 45 (or the next game for 45). As you can see, the player actually don't spent 50 USD on the game, he spent 35. That is a 30% discount. I would gadly take it myself.

Then, you can have even more extreme examples. Gamestop for example, announced on their site that if you sell 2 PS3 games, you get a 40 USD discount on Super Mario Galaxy. This mean 20 USD per game. If you bought the games used, for 45 USD, and the games orignally cost 50 USD, this mean that you got them in the end for 25 USD. 50% discount.

Note: I am not defending Gamestop, Gamestop is not even exists in my country, but I am showing how actually used games IS great for cash-stripped players, and only bad for companies that sell games that are not engaging enough.

Also:
When this started with Gears of War maps exclusive to new buyers, I made a blog post (in portuguese... in my wordpress.com) about where the industry is heading.

This is where the industry is heading:
Games are getting each year, bigger, and less focused and defined. When you have 100+ people working on a game, it becomes a "design by comitee", and not a good one (diffrent from Valve intentional Design Cabal).

This causes two things: 1. Costs, specially overhead, increase, FAST. 2. Quality drops (specially in the gameplay field... while quality in the assets field increase with diminishing returns...)

This, obviously, is one BIG bad point for the industry.

Another trend: Games are overly expensive, and less engaging, Mirror Edge, MW2 and several other games has less than 10 hours of SP gameplay and cost a good amount. Assassins Creed 1, altough having a great amount of content, is utterly boring, unless you are mostly a "sandbox" gamer. What makes GTA San Andreas shine for example, is that me, a hardcore GTA player (I played all games of the series, starting with the first one, when it was launched, and finished most of them), took about 30 hours to finish it, without "sandboxing" (I was in midcrunch too, so I decided to not waste time sandboxing, if I was playing, it was for advancing the story), without getting boring, without the story getting slow. It is not sheer content size, or quality, that makes a game, and asking 60 USD for 4 hours of play is complete bullshit. (seriously, people like to compare to movies here... here a movie ticket is 5 USD for a 2 hour movie... so, MW2 SP is worth 10 USD if we compare to movies... While FFXII is actually really worth 150 USD... of course, this is a bad comparison, it is just a random trivia here).

This, obviously fuel the used game sales, and actually, piracy too.

Then, we can go to our third point:
Publishers and devs are getting more and more hostile toward costumers, taking their rights, and breaching copyright laws (yes, all the anti-piracy actually is AGAINST copyright law...).

Quick explanation of what actually copyright law is: Copyright law, was invented so prevent other people from profiting from an author work, thus making him more likely to want to work.

Original use of copyright law: Prevent stuff, like Timbaland stealing Tempest's music and selling it as a new song to Nelly Furtado (the song in question is named "Do It", google it, the case is famous, specially in europe).

Current, misuse of the copyright law: Bash costumers for sharing their stuff. (actually, it is their right to do whatever they want, as long they don't claim that they made the product, or that they try to use it as commercial product... obviously, uploading a game to a torrent site, falls on the wrong side of ethics, and actually breaks the law in some countries too, but DOWNLOADING the game, is not wrong legally, and companies should not try punishing people that do this.)

Gross breaking of the laws: Use DCMA to enforce silly EULAs, as a springboard to take other rights from people. Example: Apple disallowing MacOSX on non-Apple machines (this is only legal, because courts ruled that the methods to install it on non-Apple machines are illegal in front of DCMA). Example 2: Preventing players to get DLC that actually came with the game. Example 3: Prevent cracking (actually, cracking is legal... the copyright law says that you can modify a software to make it run on your system the way that you want... only now that DCMA says that doing this is illegal...). Second gross law breaking: Taking the right of the first sale, by example, preventing people to sell the entire product (ie: "new sale incentive system"), preventing re-sales outright (Steam), trying to get a cut of used game sales (this article), abusive DRM that prevents the person from actually using the product when they want, and when they see fit (Steam, Ubisoft DRM, Capcom Double-Dragon DRM, several other DRM...), making impossible to BUY used games (DRM that has install limit).

This trend, obviously is wrong ethically, legally (altough in the US, the DCMA turned this upside down... but in several other countries that signed the first treaties on copyright laws, companies CAN get sued for those stuff, altough I don't think that anyone did this yet... But the ACTA will soon assure that everyone will have their own DCMA :/ ) and wrong for business too, screwing costumers is NEVER good in long-term. And yes, the ones that download games or buy ilegally in the streets, are costumers too, even if current sporadic, future, or past, or just plain their word-of-mouth capacity.

And the final trend: Some forcefull shifts, that may be bad to the industry, they are:
Negligence of home computers (not only PC), spearheaded by Microsoft, with their now crappy windows gaming support, and stupid pushes on PC to improve XBOX business (like making XInput, a API solely to support the XBOX controllers, games that use only XInput, don't support old controllers, even the high-quality MS own Sidewinder controllers, and if they use only DirectInput, XBOX controllers are not supported, because MS intentional bad drivers...), and other companies continued relying on crappy ports to windows (Valve is a example of going on the opposite direction, making good windows games, and now making them to Mac too...). This trend is bad, because it is the home computers that feed technology, and TECHNIQUE too, into the other fields, from home computers came the greatest sound chips, interesting file formats (like .MOD), GPUs, people (you cannot start making games outright for a console, specially since you need an official SDK), technique (like Lucas Arts dynamic programable music system for SCUMVM, John Carmack and Tim Sweeney graphical inventions, Shawn Hargreaves API (he made Allegro and now work on XNA), OpenGL (even consoles use OpenGL...)

The other trend is: Push to make the market "wider" without making it deeper, making "dumbed down" designs and a huge amount of crappy ports (seriously, RE4 for example has console, PC, cell-phone, iPhone, Zeebo, whatever shit... even featuring blue zombies and PS1 polygons on Zeebo...), or just throwing shovelware like if there was no tomorrow, getting more costumers by "brute force". Or using strange marketing (Evony... Zynga's Facebook spamming, Activision "FAGS" video...). Spamming MMOs (ever took a look at the amount of MMOs current in existance?), thinking that "casual gamers" exist (they actually don't, they are just normal games like everyone else, ignored by major companies that make games that rely on strange conventions without explanation, huge amount of buttons, bad interfaces, annoying or lacking tutorials, no decent manuals....).

This is the same situation that existed before the Atari market crash...

And the last trend: Make games that look less like games, and more like movies, with more and more expenses on graphics, actors, audio, hardware, and less on input methods, game design, general interface (both input and output) technology and theory...

Wow, big post...

(Thanks for the follow-up, Kris. Putting my Inner Outraged PC Gamer back in his box now....)

@Tommy Hearns, on car analogy DLC: Hmm.... doesn't quite work that well. Your car breaks down, you need those parts. You buy a used game... you don't need that DLC (despite what some people may tell you). Only when you're dealing with a game where the online component is required to play, such as with an MMO, is it close, but at that point the relationship is a bit different (you usually pay monthly) and you really should know and accept that the servers _will_ shut down some day. Perhaps that's one of the larger reasons why many companies love the idea of making MMO's and stuff.

@David Serrano: Your argument is highly flawed in two manners:

1) You make the suggestion that if the difference in price is only $5-10, then people will always buy new, but I have a hard time finding a price difference between games that is more than $10. In fact, used game sales used to never be that close to the new game sale, but they crept up to the distance they are now because people are willing to just pay $5 less for used, as they just don't care that much. Either due to lack of education or lack of empathy, many people just don't care on that front.

2) Your entire last paragraph (the whole "you must be this price to ride per month" idea) is entirely unscientific. A) I'm fairly certain companies have tried but with little to know success (or with success with only specific genres/series'). B) You're entire plan assumes that more people will buy it for cheaper instead of just being uninterested (so if the publisher reduces the price and doesn't have a large up-tick of sales, they're just losing more money). C) Your idea doesn't take into account the psychological effect of higher price == higher value (it doesn't always work that way, but that doesn't mean that the phenomenon doesn't affect people).

If you can think of _anyone_ who has done that sort of thing and has measurable success with it, I'd love to know. The more the word gets out that such a method works, clearly the better we'd all be for it. Outside of that, the alternative is that you show us the way and make tonnes of money, but my prediction of your outcome is not favourable.

Xbox Live users already pay a subscription fee to access on-line multiplayer severs. How will players react when they learn that they pay an Xbox Live Gold subsription fee, then have to pay another fee to access the server for that particular game?

One alternative would be to make Xbox Live free, then charge the player a subscription fee for each game they want to play online. However, how would that effect those of us who enjoy playing multiple games online? Left 4 Dead 2, Gears of War, MW2... lets say each game costs $5 each to play online... the player ends up paying $15 / month to play those games, and after a year, it's $60, making it more expensive than Xbox Live Gold that lets you play any game online.

I'm late commenting here, so many great arguments to read. Taking into account everything that people have said, two interesting solutions present themselves.

1) Publishers buy back their own games for a higher offering than retail outlets and destroy every copy that they receive, effectively making used games harder to find.

2) Establish an industry standard where online play for games is free for the first X numbers of years since release, after which users will have to pay a nominal fee to access legacy servers.

To better define my last point, what I'm really interested in finding out is why publishers do not offer buy-back programs similar to any money-back guarantee. I understand the risk involved, but to overcome said risk would have direct benefit on the quality of the product. Without a direct publisher-consumer buy-back program aren't we just allowing ourselves the opportunity to make lower quality products; the reason behind the overall loss in revenue in the first place?

This is hands down the largest comment section I have seen yet.

As a consumer, it sucks. But this really isnt the first game to do this, so as gamers, we should basically all be use to some sorta change, just because. Warcraft has had a subscription fee since it launched, and there is supposedly on average 3 million playing constantly. The Xbox live fee does suck, and personally I feel the same way alot of you are feeling, that $50 a year online fee we pay for Xbox should cover that online component, but Ps3 dosent have to pay for online fees, and sometimes that is the downside to Xbox, but Ps3 still dosent sell all that well, considering.
Mass Effect 2 has the "Cerberbus Network" that if you buy a new copy of the game, you can access it, and have DLC, but if you buy a used copy, or borrow someone elses copy, you cant even download DLC or use it, you hafta pay 1200 MS points for it. Same concept, its just EA is doing it for every sports game.
So....Where does the madness end? Are we just gonna hafta keep paying for micro transactions for our whole gaming lives?
DLC is awesome, not gonna lie, but sometimes what we pay for it, it just isnt good enough to pay what we did pay, and that makes me more frustrated. Now we hafta pay an additional fee, so its all just piling up, and draining us gamers of OUR money.
Next thing you know, people are gonna start sucking dick just to pay for gaming....the world is lost.

@Chris Lombardi

"Mass Effect 2 has the "Cerberbus Network" that if you buy a new copy of the game, you can access it, and have DLC, but if you buy a used copy, or borrow someone elses copy, you cant even download DLC or use it, you hafta pay 1200 MS points for it. Same concept, its just EA is doing it for every sports game."
To me, it's very different. With Cerberus, you have a kind of bonus reward, something more than the full original content. But if you buy a used version, you still get that full original content.
But what EA is doing now is cutting a part of the full original content. Used game is not the full game anymore, and that's not the same "spirit".
And I said before, it also mean that the original buyer who wants to sell its copy will get at least 10$ less from it. Not a good point.

Wow what happens when people buy 3-4 games from ea? they have to pay 30-40$? just to play online? somehow i see this backfiring...

@Frederic
Yes, I do agree. It is different, but ME2 had DLC on day one, content that should have been packaged with the two discs that they shipped, but no, they couldnt fit it, and have it as DLC. To me, that is bullshit, and if you buy a used copy, for just that tiny bit of extra content, that should have been there, you hafta pay the 1200 pts for it.
I do see the difference, but I am really not a sports game fan by any means, so could care less if they do start charging for it, cuz I wont play them anyways.
Hey, someone hasta slightly defend EA hahahha

This article pretty much sums up my feelings on the Online Pass initiative. Yes, I feel it's a rip-off, that it's bad for the consumer, and I don't like it. But EA Sports is EA's product, and they can do what they want with it as long they're not breaking any laws or breaching the consumer's rights.

I've seen a couple comments hint at this, but no one flat out say it. This is the key piece in differentiating the new product from the used product. When they're sold side by side as the same thing on a retail shelf (GameStop - I'm looking at you here), there is now something else that's different between them than just a marginal discount (and missing cello wrap).

Also, this isn't the first time EA has done this either - in FIFA 09, each new copy came with a token code for a Live Season - new for the first purchaser, but $10 for a non original owner.

Its simple: the cost of games continues to skyrocket along with shareholder's demands for growth/return. My solution is to wait two months after release for the game to hit $49.99.

What happens if you have multiple accounts and multiple XBOX 360's? This trend seems to be a cash grab, a strong arm technique, and more importantly a hassle. I couldn't be bothered with MGS4 Online because of the multiple account nonsense, now this...

Even though I to agree that the way EA has gone about this is questionable, I believe that any kind of knee-jerk reaction is sometimes needed in our industry. We often get stuck on keeping things as they are and then wonder why the game industry hits hard times. Whether this is a good idea or a bad one, it will disturb the waters enough to know what path the game industry is heading.

I would prefer to see where we're heading so we can develop and adapt to the market instead of being kicked in the shins at the last moment. It's a good time to change the way we think about games and gamers especially as the market is expanding and so dynamically changing.

And it's usually only the big "bad" companies that have the power to disturb the waters. They have the stability to take the hit if it's a bad move, where as a smaller studio would be killed.

A few things i was thinking about..

Does anyone remember the fuss EA was thowing during the early days of live on the original Xbox, they basicly forced Microsoft to allow them to have there games run on their own servers or none of their games would be on-line compatable. Microsoft then had to allow them or be left with inferior versions of their games (spcifically sports titles).

Now if it was the case that EA was not able to affort the cost of such servers... why would they push so hard to get them from the start. (EA sports games sales have been pretty high for years). So i fail to see how this is a server "up keep" issue that just now is appearing.

In regards to the "used Game" crisis that pops of every few years... in order for there to be used games available to sell at "used" prices, these games at one point had been purchased new for their MSRP. How is anyone lossing money on the "re sale" of an item that has already been sold as "New" in the market for what all parties (Developer/publisher/store) have agreed its worth? Any transactions of that product that happen after the original point of sale are no longer any concern of the original seller/Publisher/developer.

I don't know...

Things tha could be done and hopefully benefit all parties involved:

1)Have the players return the copy to a store and then to EA (or whoever) in return for a discount on new titles from the same company. In order to avoid transportation costs, the key of the game could be deactivated from the company rendering it effectively destroyed (and don't tell me that there are cracks out there. If you are willing to go there, then you would be downloading all your games and couldn't care less for the used market).

2)Have Used-game sellers give a percentage of their profits to the company that actually made the game. (I can pretty much guarantee that the moment this happens we will never hear about this stupid thing ever again)

3)Lower prices for chopped down versions of the game (eg. bare campaign for an RPG) and then more DLC from the very beginning (eg. Sidequests). This one could be abused to hell and back, but it is still a good idea IMO. Lets say 30$ for Mass Effect2 campaign and then 1$ for each new star system (numbers are obviously not indicative) or 30$ for FIFA and 5$ for each extra league/stadium (get your favorite team etc).

4)Sell cheaper through the Internet. You save the manufacturing costs and the games simply can't be resold. Obviously, a price drop would be greatly appreciated, since I have no way to make some money by re-selling the game to buy a new release. (btw, can someone explain to me why Valve's games on steam are usually 20% more expensive than in ANY OTHER STORE? It's THEIR games on THEIR platform)

Personally used games have helped me play titles that I wouldn't in any other occasion, no demo out there or not enough money in the pocket. If I really want a game to keep, I buy it new. If people had not the rent/used choice, do you really think they would still buy all these products you are refering to new? This is like the piracy argument, assuming that everyone who downloads a game would buy it. For the last time...NO THEY WOULDN'T.