'EA Sports "won" by eating a bomb, and it's ticking.'

ah, the good old days
via

That's Bill Harris of Dubious Quality, talking about how desperate EA must be to "soak" it's fan base with this new subscription fee. His theory is that the exclusive licensing fees must be increasingly squeezing all the profit out of the EA Sports balloon.

I've got no idea whether he's right. EA is agressively monetizing what used to be stuff that was included in the $49 $60 price of each game across all of their properties, so I disagree that this new bullshit is (merely) a desperation move in response to increased licensing costs. The real question is whether fans will continue to pony up the monies for this shit (and I'm pretty sure Mr. Harris will be subscribing).

But I wanted to bring it up for a couple reasons.

1. God dammit, this blog has to be more than beard pop.

2. I absolutely adore the hostility coming off Harris's post. You can only have that kind of hate for something you love. For example:

There are multiple reasons why these things don't get fixed:

1) Zero leadership.

2) It's awkward, isn't it? Can you imagine a bullet point on the box that says "Players finally move at realistic speeds"? [Nope! -Jason] Far better to spend hundreds of hours getting the correct nipple size for all the FBS cheerleaders instead.

3) Why would they want to fix any of this? The EA Sports product line is relative mediocrity paired with exceptional, cutting-edge marketing. They're not about making the product more realistic--they're about selling more product.

and

EA has crushed their competition not by making their games better, or by adding value to their products, but by cornering the market on exclusive licensing. They've bought up every exclusive license they can. No competion. Big win.

And yet he'll play them all and discuss them in great depth. It's really a great blog, that you should probably check out.