[slg]

As someone who has generally bought 2 or 3 sports titles a year from EA, this seems like an awesome deal. But since it is EA afterall, I have to ask "What is the catch?" I just don't see what exactly they get from this type of system. At $30 per year it is the cost of one game every two years. I have to imagine most of EA's customers who would be interested in this type of program make a lot more frequent purchases than that.

[vegardx]

Knowing EA there is always a catch.

I'm pretty sure that they just want to push more downloadable content on to you, and start releasing less and less complete games. Just look at the Battlefield-series, you have to buy four individual extra packages in order to play it (more or less), or you're basically stuck with the single player or empty servers. They also offer a "premium" service, where you get all the packages at a better price, but you have to pay up front.

[bentcorner]

The end result is that EA goes F2P for AAA games and makes it up on DLC/IAP.

[vegardx]

Yeah - or almost F2P. You can get AAA titles for $10-15, so they're almost there already. I think they've realised that releasing often is much more profitable. People are more inclined to pay a little fee many times, than one big one time fee. Even if the total adds up to more.

[heyheyhey]

The catch is that the updated (this year's) versions of these games probably won't be available right away.

[hack_edu]

Or, that only title available is this year's version.