14 DAY TRIAL // The chief executive officer of Electronic Arts backed up the company's Online Pass initiative and said that it was not meant to be a used-sales deterrent, but to bring added value to the customers that preferred playing their sports games online. It may be worth remembering that EA Sports titles bought as new products come now with a flier that contains a code, which is needed for online play. Those who buy the games as second-hand products have to pay EA ten dollars to get that code.
Riccitiello maintained that games were a service that needed support past the launch and that the Online Pass initiative was meant to do just that. The revenue from the passes would be used, according to the exec, to keep a development team continuously working on a title past the release date and provide better maintenance and offer new content.
Speaking to Industry Gamers, he said, “Ten years ago, five years ago, we’d gold master a game, the dev[elopment] team would move on to something else and no one was there. Today, what happens with a game is a team is there where you [use data] to improve it, provide great post-release content, new services like we did with FIFA and Madden recently with Ultimate Team. I mean the project is only half done when we ship it. It keeps going. We’re selling services.”
Riccitiello was also asked to imagine an Xbox 360 consumer who paid 50 dollars a year for an Xbox Live Gold subscription, the only way they could access the online features of their console. Afterwards, he was asked what he would say to them when they bought a second-hand EA Sports game and now had to pay another ten dollars to access that title's online features. He replied that he would thank them for their business and that he promised that they would see how much value those ten dollars would bring them.