14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent interview, Cory Ledesma, the creative director for wrestling games at THQ, said that the publisher did not really care about used game customers and that the loyal fans who bought its games new were more important.
Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 joins the Project Ten-Dollar fad created by EA, as it demands a code that comes free with new purchases to enable the title's online features, but is priced for second-hand buyers.
Speaking to CVG, Ledesma said that the his team was not really concerned about what the used game customers would think about this measure.
"I don't think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don't get the online feature set I don't really have much sympathy for them," he said.
He continued to comment that, "That's a little blunt, but we hope it doesn't disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game's bought used we get cheated."
"I don't think anyone wants that so in order for us to make strong, high-quality WWE games we need loyal fans that are interested in purchasing the game. We want to award those fans with additional content."
This is not the first sports title from THQ to come with an online pass, as the company experimented with this measure with UFC 2010 Undisputed. In that case, it also gave access to the first pack of downloadable content for the game.
Recently, Activision and Ubisoft, two other big names in the video games industry, declared that they did support this measure and planned to include it in their future releases.
The entertainment software market has been recently on the fall, with a slow sales across the board. There were a few exceptions though, StarCraft II and Read Dead Redemption to name some of them, but not enough not to prompt publisher to become even more protective of property.
The biggest target, in this case, was the used games market, as this revenue coming this way remained entirely at brick-and-mortar retailers.