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EA: Online Pass revenues “haven't been dramatic”

Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown has given the first public update on the financial performance of the company’s Online Pass scheme. Initially launched with EA Sports games - beginning with the release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 in June 2010 - but now extended to the company’s wider software portfolio, Online Pass combats the used games market by offering game-specific, one-time registration codes needed to access online services. Second hand buyers are required to pay a $10 fee if they want to unlock all of a given game's online features. "The revenues we derive from that haven't been dramatic,” Brown said at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference, as reported by Gamasutra. “I'd say they're in the $10-$15 million range since we initiated the program." Nevertheless, Brown pointed out that the sales total is all "found revenue" that comes from users who previously "consumed bandwidth for free", and the profit margins are of course significant.

Source: Gamasutra

Comments

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Goatbot's picture
Goatbot says:
September 09, 2011 at 11.27am

Online passes arent a tool to "combat" the pre owned market. The tool to do that would be to make the games good so people dont want to trade them in but EA dont do that these days. They charge £40 for access to a game husk that acts as a DLC shop but thats a seperate issue so I wont go into that further. If the game was good in the 1st place and lasted long enough then people would be less likely to trade the games in.EA want the pre owned market because it keeps up sales for their newer titles. Online passes just utilise the strength of that market so they can get in on the pot of gold that pre owned produces. Even if its not their greatest income, its a case of the cliche "every penny counts".

Mystakill's picture
Mystakill says:
September 11, 2011 at 12.49am

Every time they institute another of these blatant money-grabbing "features", my console spending goes down. I've been playing mostly on my computer these days because it's cheaper, add-ons are free, and because services which I either already pay for elsewhere, or which are already free, aren't locked behind an artificial paywall.