EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

[Money99]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/118/1185442p1.html

For an annual fee of $24.99 (2000 Microsoft Points), subscribers get four perks: Early access to all participating EA Sports titles three days before release; a 20-percent discount on downloadable content; free premium web content; and a membership recognition badge displayed both in-game and on the user's EA Sports profile.

Season Ticket currently applies to Madden NFL 12 and the upcoming releases of NHL, PGA Tour, NCAA Football, and FIFA titles. Subscribers can download a full, digital version of each game three days prior to its retail release, however the digital game will time out once the game officially launches.

[plaidchuck]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Nooo thank you.. $60 is already too much for the game.. I thought this is what things like "Playstation Plus" and xbox gold accounts were for..

[UCL]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Nope. I think I can manage to wait 3 days before playing a game.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Hell to the no. I put enough money into their pockets.

[plaidchuck]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Actually I go back on what I said, this will be a good thing for the community as we'll have a ton of impressions and reviews before the game comes out. It will also help people on the fence whether they should buy this game on release day or wait. EA might be shooting themselves in the foot on this one.

[RealmK]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Greedy greedy EA, 60 for the retail game, 25 dollars a year to get maybe some "exclusive" web tips from the devs or what not, (we all know the exclusive stuff will be cheesy) and 20% off DLC? Shouldn't that 25 bucks cover some DLC to begin with? Not impressed.

[FBeaule04]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Wow, just wow!

25$ to get insight on the game, insight will get in october anyway when every cheesy and glitching tactics (including how to get more point to your BaP) will be spread out on the net.

You know, the way I see this, next step is to have all the offline modes for 60$, then pay an extra to get the EA Pass and all the modes for online play for 1600 MS Points.

Note : EA will make sure that the offline game is necessary to access online options!

[LuGer33]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

You know, the way I see this, next step is to have all the offline modes for 60$, then pay an extra to get the EA Pass and all the modes for online play for 1600 MS Points.

I don't really follow this logic. The service as it is now is entirely optional and by no means is EA "forcing" anyone to subscribe, so how do you make the jump from what is to what you suggested?

[RealmK]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

Good thing it's entirely optional and by no means is EA "forcing" anyone to subscribe, right guys?

For sure, it's just a shame that they had the potential to make this into a service to save gamers money on yearly iterations, by say offering discounts to upgrade for being a member, and offer actual worthwhile content for that 25 dollars.

Sadly I get the feeling it will be wasted and not worth the price of admission in the long run.

[Money99]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

For sure, it's just a shame that they had the potential to make this into a service to save gamers money on yearly iterations, by say offering discounts to upgrade for being a member, and offer actual worthwhile content for that 25 dollars.

Sadly I get the feeling it will be wasted and not worth the price of admission in the long run.

Absolutely.
If being in this group meant that the retail price was $10 cheaper I'd be all over it.

What worries me is that this could be the tip of the iceburg.
Some have already suggested it, but there's a possibility that this leads us down a road where you have to be a subscriber to get roster updates, or new tuners & patches.
It's a slippery slope.

[UCL]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

I'm hoping this isn't the "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT" planned for NHL 12. That would not be received very well, I'm guessing.

[FBeaule04]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

I don't really follow this logic. The service as it is now is entirely optional and by no means is EA "forcing" anyone to subscribe, so how do you make the jump from what is to what you suggested?

If I would have said to you 4-5 years ago that you would have to get an Online Pass to access online stuff when buying the game from second hand or that you could spend around 50$ in boost to get your players better in a hurry, would you have said the same?

Marketing is making sure you can make more money with less effort. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm waiting for an EA games to make a separation between offline and online content and making the customer pay a bit for it.

[FBeaule04]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

For sure, it's just a shame that they had the potential to make this into a service to save gamers money on yearly iterations, by say offering discounts to upgrade for being a member, and offer actual worthwhile content for that 25 dollars.

Sadly I get the feeling it will be wasted and not worth the price of admission in the long run.

Well, that's not bad. If EA say : With you 25$, you'll get all the +5 boost for you BaP player and goalie, while getting 5 special card packs for the UHL and a 20% rebate on next year game, then, I would have said it's tempting.

Getting a badge, come on, it's silly. 20% off on DLC, well, if you spent for 20$ of boost, it means that you'll get 4$ off. Still will have cost you 16$ and won't even get you par with your investment.

[NHLandPESFan]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

I think there are two roads EA can go down, either turn their sports games into a subscription service with no retail release or continue with the same retail yearly releases as they are doing now and have ripoff DLC. Unfortunately they are so greedy that they are trying to do both, I don't think a lot of people are going to pay for that. I would not totally dismiss the idea of a subscription service depending on what the price was but this $25 idea is a terrible ripoff. EA might want to notice that the MMO market is going almost entirely free to play now, if they persist in this microtransaction crap after a $60 sale, more and more people are going to get fed up with them. For fun, here is a list of EA's sins against the consumer over the last few years:
1. Online pass aka Project $10
2. Unbalanced online play due to being able to buy boosts
3. Shutting down online servers for sports titles only 2 years old - (includes making a deal with Microsoft and Xbox live so they could do this since Microsoft keeps all other game servers running themselves).
4. DLC overload - While not a sports game, the fact I bought Dragon Age Ultimate Edition for the PC and did not get the DLC on disk but had to download it separately and log into to an EA server every time I play to reauthenticate the DLC is flat out ridiculous.

I'm sure there are others but EA is really headed in the wrong direction. I preordered NHL 12 solely due to the $20 amazon preorder credit and figuring I can still get $30-$40 trade for it 6 months later. If they are going to treat their games so disposably, so am I.

[adayinthelife]

Re: EA Sports Premium Package; Anyone Buying this?

If you're only a fan of one of the games in their line up then sure, this thing makes no sense at all. However, if you plan to or were thinking about possibly picking up a few EA Sports games, I don't see how this is a bad thing.

I posted this in the front page poll forum as well, but is this not the same as renting these games for the weekend? No one gets pissed off at Blockbuster or wherever you rent games about having to actually, you know, pay for the rental, so I don't understand all the hate.

This whole plan certainly isn't for everyone (I usually only get Madden and NHL, so it's not really for me), but I'm sure there are enough people who pick up virtually every sports game who could appreciate some of the features.

If EA turns this into a yearly thing that starts to remove features from the games in their line up then I'd totally get where everyone is coming from, but they haven't done that here at this point.