EA Says Gamers are Positive on $10 Pre-Owned Lockout

Rather than send every consumer into a tight-fisted tizzy, EA has gone on record to state that its Online Pass system - which requires buyers of second-hand games to pay an additional $10 for its online features - has actually gone down rather well.

At the Deutsche Bank 2010 Technology Conference in San Francisco last night, chief financial officer Eric Brown said that "reception has been positive" on the program, which aims to give the US giant some money back from pre-owned game sales.

"We thought about [Online Pass] pretty carefully and there hasn't been any significant push-back from the consumer, because I think people realise that if you're buying a physical disc and it requires an attachment to someone else's network and servers, [those] people realise bandwidth isn't free," Brown said.

"So the fact that we're diffusing or covering online costs is not viewed to be unreasonable. We're well into this program and there is no consumer backlash."

According to Brown, around 20 per cent of all game sales are second-hand which, because publishers and developers see none of that money, has a adverse effect on the industry at large.

Hat tip to Eurogamer.