Sports Games Toy With Pay To Play

Thanks to CNN Money for their article discussing videogame plans for the forthcoming football season, particularly focusing on the fact that "publishers are interested in discovering exactly how dedicated electronic football fans are to the online element." EA president John Riccitiello explains: "The online connected console is a brand new concept. We do not want to set a long term precedent that it's a free benefit, but we don't think we can get paid for the simple act of matching two consumers to play against one another. So what we've been doing is looking at alternatives." According to the article, EA will be trying pay-to-play tournaments (but only in NBA Live for now, not Madden), and the opportunity to purchase downloadable content, as EA learns "what the consumer is willing to pay for."

Comments

match entire teams?

[prichardson]

How about instead of matching two players, match two teams entirely made up of players. You could also have a coach player. This brings many more possibilities, maybe even a cooperative game play (run through whatever single player there is with a team made up of real people). Then you could a have a football sim that simulated individual players.

You could even have it almost me MMO like. Have coaches organize teams of real players based on their records. I've never been a fan of sports games myself but I might buy into that. Even better, simulate even more, a sports caster, water boy, but have AI backup for whatever people won't do.