Madden 2011 Will Have Microtransactions

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Madden NFL is probably the most iconic sports video game franchise of all-time, but in recent years, it’s features that players have been used to like old-school jerseys and historic stadiums have been taken out of the retail game and sold extra. This practice, dubbed microtransactions, will continue as Peter Moore says it “allows me to be able to take further advantage of that consumer”.

Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, sat down at the Morgan Stanley technology investor conference in San Francisco and said some alarming (for the average gamer) things. He explained Madden NFL 2010′s (last year’s edition) poor sales on the lack of a PS2 version.

Moore went on to say that he was trying to “digitize” the Madden consumer, and said that they were working on bringing a subscription model and microtransactions to the upcoming 2011 game. Moore explained that each new year of the Madden NFL game sells about 6 million copies. He said to the investors that EA was now thinking of each new copy of Madden NFL sold not as a packaged good sold, but instead, an installed user base that they could now cater too.

Moore said that aside from profit making, EA is hoping that by offering new jerseys, historic stadiums and other extras – that the players will keep the game longer. Several retail game stores in North America, most notably GameStop, will buy used games from consumers. Big game publishers like EA aren’t fond of this because they don’t make any profit on the second (and following) sales of the game.

Moore said, regarding downloadable microtransactions and used game sales:

It keeps the disc in the drive longer, it stalls trading the game in, it allows me to be able to take further advantage of that consumer over a longer period of time. Even if we do get second sales, we see that as an opportunity to drive digital margins.

Microtransactions have been often condemned by the gaming community because the perceived fact that game developers are now holding back content that would have shipped in the original retail version of the game in favor of selling it later to gamers for an additional fee.