EA Sports Envisions A Future Where Everyone Pays Subscription Fees

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Subscription fees are somewhat of a dividing factor among gamers. Some can find true value in paying a developer or publisher month after month in return for a (relatively) constant stream of content, while most just seem to want to pay once for the game and call it good. Basically, in this day and age, if you aren’t World of Warcraft, people are going to complain when you announce that there will be a monthly subscription cost for your game.

But EA Sports’ Andrew Wilson has told Eurogamer that he thinks there’ll be a time when consumers happily hand over that monthly or annual subscription fee:

If we look at what consumers have pushed other industries for, if we look at what consumers forced the music industry to provide, if we look at what consumers have driven as a result of television and movie subscription, if you look at us – there’s absolutely a time somewhere at some point in the future where the consumers say, ‘Hey, this is how we want to interact with you: we want to give you a monthly or annual subscription and we want access to everything you make.’

Before you start raging, consider what he said there: a subscription, not to play a single a game, but to play a developer’s entire catalog. Honestly, this would work out great with sports franchises like Madden or FIFA, because spending $60 on what is essentially the same game every year (albeit with a handful of updates, of course) gets pretty old fast.

If EA Sports was to implement some kind of subscription fee, Madden fans would potentially only have to buy one Madden game and then those who pay the subscription fee can get things like roster updates as they happen indefinitely instead of having to go out and buy the latest installment each year.

So, I’m on board with this idea, but I’m not sure how well it would work outside of the sports genre. Anything like this actually being implemented is still a long way off though, Wilson said, so you can expect to keep buying a new Madden or FIFA game every year for the foreseeable future.

What do you think, is EA Sports onto something here, or are you one of the gamers out there that’s vowed to never pay a subscription fee for the game? Head down to the comments section and let us know what you think!