Remember last week when we reported on EA selling unlockables? They' re getting sneakier, offering more traditionally-included bits of games for money.


First up, EA is now offering buyable tutorial videos for NCAA 07 Football and Madden NFL 07. Each 5-minute video costs $2 (160 MS Points) and covers subjects like passing or running. Hopefully we' re all smart enough to go to the internet and find a free tutorial! Joystiq reports that the video is huge (246MB) and not very helpful at all. Tutorials have traditionally been included in games and that is how it should be.



What' s even more disturbing is that in the previous article on EA selling unlockables, we mentioned that cheat codes traditionally help you unlock items that you don' t have the time to game for. Well, EA has removed the money cheat code for The Godfather, and are now charging players both in-game money and real-life money to get an item! If you don' t have enough in-game money, you can conveniently buy some with your real-life money.


To summarize: To buy the ability to have the " Level 4 Tommy Gun – Spectre Minigun" in your game, you have to buy it in XBL for 100 MS Points ($1.25). Then, to actually use it in the game, you have to purchase it with $750,000 of your hard-earned game currency. If you don' t have that in-game cash, you can buy (one-time only) $250,000 game dollars for 150 MS Points ($1.50). (Also available are smaller game currency purchases of $50,000 and $100,000.) Again, there' s no longer an in-game money cheat code!


EA is getting really slimy with this, charging for every bit of content they can find.

I for one wont be supporting this line of approach

There was a nice piece on the real life economy of Second Life on Channel 4 news the othernight, my girlfriend and I were really shocked that taking money out your Second Life cashline actually charges your real life credit card! however now the precedent has been set, looks like more andmore companies will cash in on it.

This really sucks though! On a similar note, Chromehounds is already charging for extra weapons, which I' m sure are more badass than those found in the original game. Therefore if you play online against people who are prepared to pay, you are already at a disavantage. Sucky sucky, and not what us players wanted at all for extra downloadable content

I hope EA don' t make a habit of this, but this looks like the road they want to travel.

It' s one thing to charge for extra content that was made after the game was finished being made. But to charge for content that' s already in the game is rediculous.

" Can' t be bothered to finish a game? Buy the ending!"

Man I shouldn' t give them ideas. [:' (]

Second Life isn' t the same though, since it' s user created content that is potentially infinitely being produced, ala real life.

EA = Atari from the 80s

EA = Money Whore...simple and easy.

Yet another reason to hate EA..... Didn' t really need anymore but, whatever...

This $#!ts gotta stop. Games should be complete not half baked rubbish that require additional purchases to fully enjoy (hint GT). EA (and to a certain extent sony) are setting a dangerous precedent by providing a dollar value for game content. SOon all the real popular content will dissappear from the game and appear as a download that you must pay for. This is bad news, and gamers should vote with there wallets and boycott this type of bull$#!t and not let it get out of hand, or soon games you buy will simply be and empty world were levels, characters and items are purchased seperately - all because you paid less then the console was actually worth.

Thank goodness for Nintendo (at the moment at least), who have not got something like this implace (unless i missed something), because the actually make a profit of the console they do not have to resort to other (underhanded?) revenue methods to recoup losses.

Thank goodness for Nintendo (at the moment at least), who have not got something like this implace (unless i missed something), because the actually make a profit of the console they do not have to resort to other (underhanded?) revenue methods to recoup losses.

EA isn' t manufacturing a console, and they' re leading the way in all this. So it really comes down to whether or not people buy this sort of stuff.

When the Halo 2 map packs came out, I told myself that I would just wait until they were free (after about 2 months of them charging for them). Of course, when all of my friends caved in and bought them on day one, I followed suit.

This is just sad. Just imagine how Burnout 5 will be. Burnout is like the only game that I really care about from EA. I sure wouldn' t buy cheat codes or anything like that, but uh, they could easily sucker me in to buying the cars though...but I' m not rich either so...

*grabs a pen and crosses out Burnout 5 on Ninja' s ' Games that I really want in 07' *

ORIGINAL: Zoy

Thank goodness for Nintendo (at the moment at least), who have not got something like this implace (unless i missed something), because the actually make a profit of the console they do not have to resort to other (underhanded?) revenue methods to recoup losses.

EA isn' t manufacturing a console, and they' re leading the way in all this. So it really comes down to whether or not people buy this sort of stuff.

When the Halo 2 map packs came out, I told myself that I would just wait until they were free (after about 2 months of them charging for them). Of course, when all of my friends caved in and bought them on day one, I followed suit.

EA is pioneering this $#!t, but so is sony, when it announced the GT HD where the cars are sold seperately via those ' microtransactions' . I' m pretty sure when sony started talking about alternative revenue streams with ps3 (which they need to offset the immense losses the ps3 will inflict on sony) such as microtransactions and ingame advertising, that pretty much got the ball rolling. THe 360 ain' t got its hands clean on this one either (horse armour, am i right?).

Thats what i like about Nintendo, with US$250 you pay off the console and are not going to pay any sort of underhanded hidden fees (ie to get content) to enjoy your games, you pay the ticket price for the game take it home and enjoy, knowing you are getting a complete game, and with online apparently they will add additional content to your games for free (i could be wrong but i' m pretty sure its a free service). Gamers must stop this so when won' t have a Pay per Play type set up in a few years time (like arcades).