EA: Online Pass has raised $15-$20 million
Sales volume "not dramatic" says CFO Eric Brown
EA's CFO Eric Brown, speaking at the Citi 2011 Tech Conference yesterday, told listeners that the publisher's Online Pass system has brought in around $10-15 million in revenues.
The system, which is designed to rake back some revenue from customers buying second hand titles by asking them to buy a one-time code to use online features, costs users $10 for each pass.
"The revenues we derive from that haven't been dramatic," Brown told the conference, via Gamasutra. "I'd say they're in the $10-$15 million range since we initiated the program."
Brown also revealed that EA's latest large-scale social venture, The Sims Social, has been a tremendous success - becoming the third most played game on Facebook, according to EA's own statistics, which put the DAU figure at 7.8 million. That figure leaves Sims Social just 200,000 daily average users short of second placed Farmville.
"What has made [The Sims Social] a success so far is the Playfish expertise...combined with the creative excellence of the core Sims team," Brown told the audience. "Those teams work together exceptionally well."
I hate this practice
I'm not saying that it's a cool thing for them to do, but it should come as no surprise to anyone.
Lifetime was supposed to represent your lifetime of playing that game (online or offline) which is not infinite.
Say on average lifetime of online use per consumer is 18 month.
However due to second hand sale that average lifetime would go up to 36 month or longer.
Online pass represent the cost/time component of the equation.
Second hand sales of games is a permanent loss of revenue for publisher yet extend the requirement of providing online service.
Servers do not exist in a vacuum in real life.
There is an substantial monthly cost (space, yes there is a charge for space in a DC, power, leasing or amortization cost of the server, licensing for software, bandwidth and not to mention IT support/operation team to keep the server running) to maintain a live server.
So no, this is not another money grabbing scheme and people in the industry need to be able to understand the rationale.
Now if Online pass make second hand sales retailer reduce their price of the second hand game they sell to consumer it would do exactly what you want i.e. inherently making them factor in that cost.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Joe Tay on 9th September 2011 5:01am
So does Online Pass mean we'll see EA game servers not getting shut down after two years? Thought not.
Online Pass does mean if you bought a second hand copy and the online service are no longer available you are not "paying" for something that is no longer available.
As for whether game servers will be available, I will use a metaphor. If you open a cafe it was booming at the start but after 2-3 year you end up having only a handful of customers would you still keep it open?
A business must make reasonable profit to stay open, and I don't see that happening if you keep open enough empty cafes.
To be clear these are my personal opinion, but I feel strongly enough that online pass is actually an attempt to be fair both to the consumer and to the people who work hard to get the games out the door.
I seem to remember publishers pushing for this first. Surprisingly, the stores/chains in question were reluctant to hand over money they didn't have to.