Home Gaming One day, EA will charge subscription – and it’ll be your fault

One day, EA will charge subscription – and it’ll be your fault

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EA Sports vice president Andrew Wilson has told Eurogamer that one day in the future there will "absolutely" be a time when gamers will want to pay EA monthly subscriptions to access its content without being burdened by physical media. And it’ll be you, the end user, pushing for it.

"If we look at what consumers have pushed other industries for: if we look at what consumers forced the music industry to provide, if we look at what consumers have driven as a result of television and movie subscription, if you look at us – there’s absolutely a time somewhere at some point in the future where the consumers say, ‘Hey, this is how we want to interact with you: we want to give you a monthly or annual subscription and we want access to everything you make,’" he said to Eurogamer. "They get to drive the time and place for it, and a lot of it is technology dependent, but absolutely we can see a future where that might be the way we deliver games."

Of course, he’s absolutely right; there will be a time when gamers will opt (and to an extent be forced) to adopt digital delivery as the sole method of getting games – but that time isn’t here yet. As we’ve seen with the popularity of limited collector’s editions of games, there’s still a high value attached to physical media. People like to feel like they own things, instead of just access to a server. Plus, there’s the fact that bandwidth and internet speed is terribly limiting in some areas – which is one  reason it hasn’t quite happened yet.

"It’s less about the generation and more about internet infrastructure," Wilson said. "The thing about consoles…that’s a lot of content: six, seven gigs of information. Right now there are some places in the world where you can move that size of information around relatively seamlessly; there are a lot of places you can’t. Right now the consoles themselves could facilitate it," he clarified, "but there are other barriers to entry that make getting it from Game or GameStop a viable proposition, at least today."

Wilson’s comments come in response to a leaked EA memo detailing an EA sports subscription service “annual paid subscription that enhances your gaming experience."

Source : Eurogamer

Last Updated: July 26, 2011

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