One of the good things about having a massive European trade show like Gamescom is that SCEE President, Andrew House, makes himself available for interviews. Videogames industry website gamesindustry.biz got chance to catch up with House and grill him about all things PlayStation.
When asked “How do you feel about a publisher like EA making online play an extra payable component on PSN with the Online Pass for second-hand consumers?” House replied;
“On the principle of making online portions of the game available or unlocked from the disc-based release for a fee, we’re broadly supportive of that. And we’re exploring actively the same option for our own content.”
Of course Sony have already adopted this tactic with the PSP release of Modnation Racers, but this is the first indication that Sony would like to roll out the second-hand revenue generator across more of their release.
To my recollection this makes EA, THQ, Ubisoft, TakeTwo (through 2K Games) and now Sony backing the Online Pass as a method to attempt to generate revenue from pre-owned sales, leaving just Activision from the major players to show their hand.
Given that businesses are in the business of making ever increasing amounts of money and that it’s safe to assume that gamers want ever more stuff including in their purchase or free of charge, is Online Pass a good compromise? Let us know in the comments below.
Via Eurogamer.
heedbaw
Interesting article I found looking for something, this was back in January
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/jan/14/games-controversy
What I was looking for was figures that EA had published, showing game sales vs server useage.
Jackarseboyz
Online is included with the games, games that already cost a hefty amount whether preowned or not. I think its a bullshit idea to charge extra for pre-owned games, that may have only been bought for $10(AU) less
mark w.
I’m from Belgium and here all the games are way too expensive. So I buy the most of my games from Shopto or some of them pre-owned.
I will give an example: I just ordered Just Cause 2 from Shopto for 30€ incl. shipping. Price for the same game here in a local games-store in Belgium: 60€ new and 40€ pre-owned. This example speaks for itself.
jonwaters34
Personally I do not play a lot online as I play more single player than anything. I also buy more new games than second hand (cannot actually remeber the last time that I bought second hand. I think that when you look at this the companies are already making enough money from us even when bought from new as when a game is released further down the line they then release add on content for an additional fee through psn or xbox live which should of actually been released on the original game.
On the subject of playing for online usage then of this does get released by all of the major developers then in time to come they will all start charging for this from release which means that more people will then start missing out.