Topic: Pay-to-Play Online Madden?

[NewsBot]

If the GameCube version of Madden ever goes online, you might need to pay to play.

CNN Money's videogame columnist, Chris Morris, has a column talking about Electronic Arts' online gaming practices, and how it wasn't making as much money as it used to be.

EA's free (but ad-riddled) onling gaming website, Pogo is still making EA money, but the ads that the site forces upon you isn't bringing in the cash that is has in past years.  While in a conference call about this topic, EA's president and COO John Riccitello made a comment about the world's number one football game:

"I think in this generation there's only very modest revenue potential for [Xbox Live and Sony Online]," he said. "What has yet to be proven, but I think it represents a significant revenue opportunity if we can play it out properly, is added revenue generation capability in the back end. So instead of just selling Madden at $49, we may be able to generate subscription [revenue] on the back of that. At this point, that's frankly more speculative than it is substantive, but that's what we're going to be working on over the balance of the cycle."

In other words, don't expect to play Madden for free, if or when the GameCube version ever gets to have this feature.  If EA sheds anymore light on this topic at E3, we'll be sure to grab it for you.

[NWR_Lindy]

Pay-to-play makes sense as far as I'm concerned, but I don't think the masses will be willing to shell out $5-$10 a month to do it.  I think it would be more reasonable if they did this:

- make an online game cheaper to draw people in, like maybe $39.99 instead of $49.99
- have online play for that game cost about as much as a yearly magazine subscription, like $19.99 or $24.99

To me this is totally reasonable for discretionary spending like this.  $10 a month isn't much, but when you stretch it out to $120 a year that's pretty costly for most people.

silks

[jasongst]

What totally bugs me is that they continue to look at online play as a long-term obligation. If that were true 90% of the PC's online-capable games would NOT have online play at all, but on the contrary most of them offer it for free! The problem is, in most cases, ONLINE PLAY ITSELF IS NOT A WAY TO MAKE MONEY. Especially for sports games. There is NO reason for someone to pay to play on the publisher's server when they could play on a private one for free! The equation is so damn easy it almost makes me POP every time I hear them whining about how it's not making enough money. Web page ad revenues!?!?!?!?! What the heck are these people trying to do to gaming? Here's the equation:

online play + servers hosted by the public = more people want to play your game + no long term obligation to the publisher

This is not brain surgery.

[NWR_Lindy]

Online gaming is easier with PCs though, because every person playing the game has the potential to run a server b/c they already have the hardware.  Not everybody that has a console has a PC to run a server on, or the technical ability to know how to do so.  PC gamers as a whole are a much more tech-savvy crowd than console gamers (because they have to be).

So by its very nature, online gaming for consoles needs more hand-holding from the publishers.  Somebody has to dumb-down the process for people that don't have access to a server or don't know how to set one up.  This means they have to take on the burden of running the server.

silks

[jasongst]

I think you misunderstand--only a handful of console owners need to be running PC servers. The efforts of the few benefit the many. This has been shown to balance out very well with other games. There are always more servers than there are players to play on them. 99% of PC game players don't bother setting up servers unless they are playing together on a LAN.

As far as dumbing it down to be easy to use, this has been done already too. Take Unreal Tournament for example. If you run a public server it will show up on the list inside the game. Each server, by default, broadcasts its presence and will be automatically added to a list of game servers. It's just up to the user to pick a server (the game can even pick one automatically) and play. This is no different than something you'd currently see with online console games.

The DIFFERENCE here is that console publishers right now are trying to do it all! They are trying to house enough servers to hold everyone in the United States (that's a crapload of servers, and a crapload of hosting fees), AND in many cases they are trying to host player rankings, user accounts--all sorts of crazy stuff.

If you want to offer player rankings then go ahead and charge for it, but if you just talking simple multiplayer, Keep It Simple, Stupid.