Anybody else old enough to remember the Sega Channel?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel</a><p>An early harbinger of streaming services, the Sega Channel was amazingly decent - dare I say "good" - for the time. As this system likely will be, the "play all you want" model relied on a few dozen games at a time being available and then they'd cycle out every month or so.<p>For someone who was a kid that played a lot of video games, this was ideal. My father once relayed to me that we'd rented Super Mario Bros 2 enough times to have purchased it 3 times over.<p>The resale market for video games is pretty absurd. Here, of course, is where I admit that even though I've cracked 30 I'm still playing a lot of video games. If I plop down $60-$70 on a game it's not a recoupible expense in any way, and in the days of all digital everything, this feels ludicrous.<p>The fact that consoles are still relying on DRM media is an amazing but predictable anachronism, and it feels like it exists solely because the game companies cannot figure out how to properly handle this model.<p>Having used the new Adobe Creative Cloud for a while, I find it's a really nice approach that doesn't end up costing any less but gives me some flexibility.
This seems like a pretty great deal, what's the catch?<p>I'm guessing that the games will only be available for a limited period of time, then if you still want to play them you'll have to purchase them, which would be very different from Netflix.<p>I doubt these games have any of the DLC. You might be able to purchase the DLC, but then when the game is no longer offered on the service you'll be left with worthless DLC until you buy the full game.<p>Some people also purchase all services of this type, even if they already have the full games, because it's also offering exclusive content and betas, so it's basically a free $30 for each of those people to EA, millions of people times $30.
Almost every parent comment so far contains "What's the catch?" or something similar. Speaks volumes of EA's lack of transparency with their customers. They make great games, but seem to have some sleaziness when it comes to the pricing/terms of their products.
As someone who has generally bought 2 or 3 sports titles a year from EA, this seems like an awesome deal. But since it is EA afterall, I have to ask "What is the catch?" I just don't see what exactly they get from this type of system. At $30 per year it is the cost of one game every two years. I have to imagine most of EA's customers who would be interested in this type of program make a lot more frequent purchases than that.
Nah, I prefer GOG with their DRM-free games. EA has some games there, but not a lot:<p><a href="https://secure.gog.com/games##search=electronic%20arts" rel="nofollow">https://secure.gog.com/games##search=electronic%20arts</a><p>"Undying" is one of the best examples. But they never allowed re-releasing Neverhood and many other great games.<p>All those DRMed services are a no go.
Will be very interesting to see what impact a successful model here would have on the trade-in/re-sell revenue of brick and mortar. I believe these numbers have been hovering in the 25% range for the past few years.
I wish I had something more poignant to say other than this is dumb and EA is dumb.<p>They're nickle and diming their customers into oblivion. I guess there will always be the diehard sports game console-only fanatics, but there is no way EA can keep up with the trend of indies and on-demand on Steam.