Gamers' opinions are mixed regarding EA Sports Season Ticket, the yearly subscription plan that will give members access to games like Madden several days before they are officially released.
Electronic Arts said this week that the plan, which will be offered to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers at $25 a year, will be available starting with Madden 12 later this month. Fans will be able to download the game three days early and play until it is released, at which time they will have to head to a store to buy it.
Other perks in the plan include a 20 percent discount on downloadable content for other EA Sports titles, like NCAA, FIFA and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, as well as "free premium web content."
EA is aiming at a very hard-core audience with Season Ticket – a contingency of gamers who live and breathe all things sports games. In online forums and comment threads, some fans say they are psyched to play games early, while others see Season Ticket as an easy cash-grab for EA Sports. Wired.com spoke to a handful of gamers, both hard-core and casual, to hear peoples' thoughts on the new program.
"It's a month too late," said longtime sports game fan Michael Graening. "It should have been ready for this year's NCAA Football instead of next year's. Given the tie-in between NCAA and Madden ... having the seasons not work together seems [like] poor timing."
Plans like this are an inevitable part of the industry's switch to digital content.Graening also said he would prefer not to have to go to the store once his digital copy of the game expires, suggesting in an e-mail that EA Sports could partner with retailers to allow Season Pass holders to go to the store and pick up their games early.
"Not having to deal with midnight-release crowds would be another added value to the pass," he said.
EA's Season Ticket comes hot on the heels of Activision's Call of Duty Elite, a monthly membership plan that will provide extra stat-tracking and social networking services to fans of the massively popular shooter franchise. These type of premium programs can potentially provide multiple benefits for gamemakers – including increased customer loyalty and extra revenue streams – assuming that customers see the appeal.
After the Season Ticket announcement, some gamers criticized EA for not finding a better way to get customers early access to games.
"If we count in having to download the game ... that's already less than three days since not everyone has incredibly fast download speeds," FIFA fan Damola Olaloko said in an e-mail.
Several fans slammed the price of the plan, saying that the yearly fee is too high for the benefits that it provides.
"I think the EA Sports Season Ticket is potentially a great idea but at $25 I can't see it working out well at all with EA Sport fans," said gamer Steve Rosa. "If EA were to price it maybe at $15 a year I'm sure that more people would be willing to do that."
When asked for comment by Wired.com, EA Sports did not respond by press time.
Industry Inevitabilities
Will hard-core gamers be willing to pay for early access? M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon thinks so, calling Season Ticket a positive for big fans of sports games – as long as EA doesn't start charging for things gamers previously got for free.
"If it's hobbling the features of the game, that would be strongly negative," Pidgeon said in a phone interview with Wired.com. "They have to make sure regular buyers still feel like they're getting their money's worth.
Plans like this are an inevitable part of the industry's switch to digital content, Pidgeon said. He expects that other gamemakers will follow suit, saying he thinks companies like EA and Activision are already ahead of the game on this trend, both in implementation and marketing.
"The companies that come out ahead here are going to be the ones who are marketing these features in such a way that customers feel like they're getting more for what they're paying," he said. "Not getting less for what they've already been buying. It's definitely a tricky path to market, but that's the challenge."
