PSP Pay-to_Play

[NovaXpress]

Check this out, in order to access online play in EA's Fight Night 3 for the PSP, you have a choice to make: give your personal information to ESPN or pay.

 

Thanks to ESPN, you can play this EA Sports product online as part of EA Nation at no charge! By accepting the ESPN sponsorship, I will allow ESPN to pay my $2.00 online subscription for this game and understand that ESPN may contact me with offers and promotions such as subscriptions to ESPN the Magazine and ESPN Insider.

 

By clicking Accept, I agree to ESPN’s sponsorship. I understand that if I am at least 18, ESPN will contact me with offers and promotions and I am authorizing EA to share my EA account membership information with ESPN in the United States. ESPN’s use of my account information is subject to the ESPN Privacy Policy, which I have read and I accept.

 

From the privacy policy: ESPN can share your personal information with other subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company and third parties so they they can send you promotional material.

Even better, you don't find out about the extortion until after you enter the rest of your personal information.

 

This is certainly a test to see how much gamers will put up with. The marketing information is worth far more to them than the two bucks. The next generation of games is all about extra charges. pay more for new levels, characters and powerups. It's a bad move in the long run. If Nintendo avoids this trap, they might just retake the throne.

 

Kotaku: Pay-To-Play

Edited February 20, 2006 by NovaXpress

[maibock]

You knew it was coming, but it never hit me until last year when the new Halo2 maps were released 2 maps now, 2 maps in a few months and 2 more maps in the fall, all for free, like they promised OR you can get ALL the maps now, but you have to pay for each map after the first 2 free maps.. At that point I thought oh shit, batten down the hatches. Despite my kids' desperate pleas to get the new maps, even offering their own money, we stuck it out on principle..

 

I think the buy it now with cell phones are conditioning people to this.. It's all evolving this way.. I just hope there's some nasty backlash sometime down the road..

[SHAGOHOD X99]

None of that surprises me in the least, and the sad thing is, is that your average *mainstream* gamer won't see a problem with it, sign up and before you know it EVERYONE will be forcing stuff like that on gamers without a choice. To me it's not much different than how stores like BEST BUY want to track where I'm from upon buying something. Or how I'd go into a radio shack in the past to get a simple AV cable and they'd want all my personal info, which I ain't giving them and if I do it's fake address to some parking lot in Japan that at one time was the black market outdoor stalls 2 days after WWII ended. Some will say it's a part of progress I call it bullshit. But whatever floats another's boat.

[JB]

Eww, that's nasty.

 

Why am I not surprised it's EA? And in sports games, on top of it.

[chrisbid]

most people dont care, and this sort of thing is going to take off

[Atarifever]

most people dont care, and this sort of thing is going to take off

1021834[/snapback]

That's so sad because it's totally true.

[JagFan422]

god people, its the same for Madden 06, give them your info or pay like $2, just give them fake information and your fine, i play Madden 06 online all the time and you don't "have" to give them personal info if you don't want to

[ls650]

Yeah, create a free email just for this purpose, and give them fake name and address. They don't need to know who you are, and you don't need to be spammed.