Instead of building on the backbone of what has already been created.
1. Purchase of online games.
2. Purchase of DLC.
3. Purchase of new games sales.

Now they want to squeeze the value and functionality of already existing games by charging a fee for whoever does not have an original “one time only” code. I already had to pay more because my original code did not work on my brand new game. They had no mercy and made me purchase an extra $15 on a game I just bought brand new.

When a person buys used, they already sacrifice the new box, new literature, possible scratches, etc. That is not enough for EA. They want you to also not have online play unless you pay more for it. How about all the people who have multiple PS3 in their home? They want them to pay for online access on each machine. The code won’t work from one machine to another, so if you want to play in the living room, or in the bedroom or in the game room, you have to lug the one console that has the came code activated for online play.

It’s a bad idea. They may make some money on the uneducated consumer in the shirt term, but they will be setting a bad precedence that will give their smarter competitors an edge when they do not complicate the gamers life with trying to figure out how much access they will have to a game they purchased new or used.

I can see the longevity of good games like battlefield going down the drain when gamers who want to purchase such a game say, no, that is an EA game, and if you buy that, you won’t be able to play with other people, because they made it too complicated to play online.

BFBC2 is already complicated to play with your friends online. You don’t get to choose the maps you play in after the initial map, therefore, if your friend does not have the extra cost download, then they simply get knocked off the game, no warning, no message, no nothing. Just as cold as EA’s lack of care and consideration to their gamers.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated EA from back in the day’s of Delux Paint, but their most recent strategies seem like they have lost touch with their audience.

This new idea of charging online access for an already purchased game brings no value to the consumer. The original purchaser of the new game already paid for the online access portion. Who cares if they gave their game to their niece or nephew. It’s not right that the niece or nephew now have to pay for the online access that their uncle already paid for.

If EA were to keep it to VIP only type access where you got a bonus for having purchased the original game, that would be more reasonable. However, this trend of cannibalizing the functionality of a game by offering less and less on the CD and making more and more content only available for more pay is a huge turn off to me and to all of my friends as well. As it is, we have not been able to play BFBC2 for the last two weeks due to online problems.

In contrast, take a game like Rainbow Six Vegas 2. What a gem! It seems that once all my friends an I play out a new game we always go back to the tried and true great games like Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Hopefully, new games will come out much more like R6V2.

It’s not perfect but you can’t blame them. If anything it will make preowned games cheaper and if you only want one of their games to play offline you’ve got a steal. it’s not perfect but they have to pay for their servers somehow. It’s just a shame they’ve decided to punish rather than reward like BF:BC 2 did with rewarding 1st time buyers with maps and other in game content.