EA looking into Battlefield subscription service

EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund says the company is "looking at" a subscription model, but isn't ready to talk about specific plans.

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EA has been angling to be on equal footing with Activision's Call of Duty franchise, and the success of Call of Duty Elite has given the company a whole new reason to smolder with jealousy. EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund has taken note of Elite's success, and says the company is looking into something similar.

"I think it's fair to say we're looking at [a subscription model]," Sonderlund told Venture Beat. "Like all other companies, we're looking at how we can maximize our investment in this and get the most out of our investment and get more people playing this product. That may take us to different places, but we're not really talking about where that is yet."

He says that Battlefield's Battlelog features are already providing some similar services. "We have people in Stockholm and North America and other parts of the world that are in this every single hour of every single day," he said. "365 days a year. We have an operations team at DICE to look at telemetry data. How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff."

All the same, Sonderlund isn't challenging Call of Duty to a cage-match. "Call of Duty is a shooter, but it's a different shooter. And I think they have a market; we have a market. I'm fine with what I'm doing. I'm going to continue innovating and doing as best I can with my team. Hopefully that's going to lead us to more units [sold] and more happy customers."

Sonderlund isn't the first EA executive to tip the company's hand on a subscription model. Peter Moore recently said the company may take a model similar to Elite, or even aim to do something "one step ahead." Meanwhile, Activision is preparing Call of Duty Elite 2.0, so this year's shooter rivalry might be over the accompanying services more than the shooters themselves.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 19, 2012 1:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, EA looking into Battlefield subscription service.

    EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund says the company is "looking at" a subscription model, but isn't ready to talk about specific plans.

    • reply
      March 19, 2012 1:01 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 19, 2012 1:09 PM

      I play BF because it's NOT CoD. You do this and I'll stop buying BF games too EA.

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        March 19, 2012 1:13 PM

        CoD has a subscription service now? the elite thing isnt mandatory

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        March 19, 2012 1:13 PM

        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ What he said.

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        March 19, 2012 3:17 PM

        To be honest they actually seem to really try to be a Cod copy with small non vehicle maps, and even makes some things worse than Cod (unlocks). For me it was to much so I gave up at level 20'ish and this was probably my last battlefield game, which makes me sad in a way because there is so much potential, they have an absolute stellar engine with the best sound, yet they add shit like unlocks and small cod-like meat grind maps. Shit I could love this game if it wasn't their greed/stupidity rubbed all over it.

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          March 19, 2012 4:45 PM

          Unlocks have been in the Battlefield franchise since BF2, I don't see why its a problem with you only now. That said I put less hours into BF3 than I did for BC2 and unlocked everything I wanted faster. As for the maps, unless you're playing conquest metro or TDM/DM none of the maps are as small as any CoD map. If you stopped on only 20 you're missing out.

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            March 20, 2012 7:08 AM

            it has always been a problem with me, however the mechanics in BF3 are way worse than before, inane stupid shit like essential vehicle counter measures etc. should never ever be an unlock. Not to mention the amount of time you have to spend playing to unlock essential gear (mostly this refers to vehicle stuff, but also stuff like smoke, IR etc.) if mindbogglingly high, insane.

            The way its designed (particularly on the xbox where you have no 'training' servers or servers with particular rotations/settings) its damn near impossible to play and learn if you are a lower level with few unlocks, its just turns to a stupid spam fest where you spend more time looking at the re spawn screen than playing. That's not BF, that's Cod level shit.

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      March 19, 2012 1:13 PM

      A business is evaluating multiple different business models story at 11

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      March 19, 2012 1:14 PM

      Pretty despicable to me to see them talk about this 'service' and 'product' without ever mentioning the actual benefits to the service or game, all they see is the money on the table.

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        March 19, 2012 2:08 PM

        right... but they have to mention it now so they can plant the seeds in your mind... and seeing money on the table is a good thing when your a business, you can never fault a company for wanting to make more money. you can only fault a company on customer satisfaction and lack of innovation.

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      March 19, 2012 1:14 PM

      nooooooooooooo

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      March 19, 2012 1:17 PM

      if its anything like their pay to win bf heroes garbage, they can eat a bag of dicks.

      i already despise their weapon grinding scheme and balancing issues with weapons like the famas in regular bf3 that penalized regular players and overall fragmentation of the community with every stupid fucking booster pack/dlc/addon they did in every battlefield so far.

      i will commend them that this one time they finally got a working server browser by not using the pile of shit gamespy but like with every dice game there as still enough things they need to patch.

      i look forward how they manage to ruin this game in grand ea fashion by trying to nickel and dime the shit out of a minority of the community who is willing to pay for things like dogtags (which is probably an deserving idiot tax. valve has shown that there is money in hats so as long as they don't introduce overpowered weapons which they undoubtedly will...).

      karkand was ok because it was maps we knew, and it was widely available through the limited edition preorder so fragmentations wasnt too bad. look at the dlc shit around bioware and mass effect and you will get an idea where we are heading.

      also the need to add a working backup system for the game. i had to redownload the whole game because i wanted to copy the files from my ssd to my hd. even using regedit and diverse tweak it didnt work.

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        March 19, 2012 1:19 PM

        battlefield heroes isnt really pay to win. it just seems that way because you're pretty much invincible when you've maxed your ability levels. the better guns are only marginally better and in the wrong hands they still get wtfpwned by more experienced players. the game was lots of fun

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          March 19, 2012 1:33 PM

          i recall their general manager doing a presentation called "pay to win" at gdc which in tl;dr fashion cooked down to "look at our success motherfuckers, we thought we were going to get axe'D but look at all the money we made by nickel and dimeing the shit out of people. our success gives us right".

          basically the whole concept is based around insane people spending ungodly amounts of money on the game with everything else build around them is meant to enable them spending insane sums.

          there was an article/interview on farmville/zyngas business model that was basically build like pushing dope and using really shady methods of enabling addiction and peer pressure to sell their garbage.

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            March 19, 2012 1:39 PM

            havent played it in a long awhile but things could have changed. in the 2 + years that I played that game I didnt spend a cent on it and I usually did alright

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              March 19, 2012 1:53 PM

              i think their forums went batshit insane when they finally made the switch in selling gameplay advantages.

              i really want tribes acend to succeed and i had some fun with the beta but there are some undeniable advantages in certain unlocked weapons or perks that will take a very long time to unlock despite being really significant advantages in the hand of someone who knows what the fuck especially if dedicated classes and specializations are a necessity to get a good team running.

              it really depends on how they price the game after the beta and i want to play it but if unlocking everything costs more than buying a triple a game i will either pass or unlock only a single class with the absolute minimum perks that i need to play path finder as a dedicated flag capper which will inevitably lead to cases where you have lots guys that have done the same and cant really help the team when a specific class with a specific loadout is needed.

              this shit works in deathmatch but it leads to some really ugly matches in capture the flag.

              some shit like having to unlock flares or the defibrillator in bf3 is similarly stupid.

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                March 19, 2012 1:58 PM

                ya but with Battlefield heroes you could buy anything and everything with money you earned in game. however itonly lasted a few days. or you could buy it permanently with real money. I think the backlash was due to the factt hat you'd have to grind for several hours to purchase an item that would only last a short time. since I was in alpha/beta I had accumulated a lot fo the free credits so I never ran low

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      March 19, 2012 1:18 PM

      There is a market for a monthly subscription and F2P. The trick is finding the balance between all models.

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        March 19, 2012 1:21 PM

        Sony is the worst of the pay to win f2p models. their Star Wars the Clone wars adventures f2p game is a joke that charges you real money for pretty much everything

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          March 19, 2012 1:52 PM

          TF2 is now F2P, play? Stock weapons can kill, grinding can get you upgrades. Money buys you things, but nothing buys you OP weapons/skills/etc.

          A subscription service is different than F2P and needs to be treated as such. What would the draw be? What's the setting? Am I hopping into random servers, or is there a weekly theme? There is a lot at play for the subscription model, this isn't simply unlocking everything in BF3.

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            March 19, 2012 1:55 PM

            Star Wars Clone adventures is F2P however a big portion of the content is locked under a subscription fee that is labelled as "Jedi" and microtransactions pretty much cover anything even remotely cool in the game

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      March 19, 2012 1:18 PM

      lol

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      March 19, 2012 1:46 PM

      You get your full investment by providing a great service. Not squeezing your customers to death. It has been proven already. Why do you keep doing this EA? Oh wait you really are this fucking stupid

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        March 19, 2012 2:02 PM

        psst, we don't count anymore. it's the investors they care about. As long as they make money for the investors we could eat shit.

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      March 19, 2012 1:50 PM

      damn it. DO NOT WANT.

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      March 19, 2012 2:06 PM

      someone explain to me exactly what COD Elite does. is it an "i win" button over folks not using it? i dont know much about it at all, only that its a pay service for the COD

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        March 19, 2012 2:12 PM

        I think its only advanced stat tracking and access to every DLC once released. But what do I know, I'm a PC.

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        March 19, 2012 2:32 PM

        It's just stat tracking like you can get for free from Bungie in Halo 3 and Reach, and access to the DLC.

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          March 19, 2012 2:36 PM

          Its Activision experimenting with what their idiot customers will buy.

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        March 19, 2012 3:30 PM

        It's pre-paying for maps with some incentives that aren't worth much.

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          March 19, 2012 6:11 PM

          Sort of, but if I remember correctly its cheaper to sign up for elite and get the DLC than to get each of them separately. Then you get the other stuff on the side. I saw it more as a GOTY edition with stat tracking than anything else.

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      March 19, 2012 2:19 PM

      "How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff."

      Yea, they ask the questions and get the answers but don't do anything about it.

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      March 19, 2012 2:37 PM

      Here's a hypothetical situation:

      Activision creates a "Gold Membership" version of CoD. Basically anyone with a Gold membership can join servers exclusively populated with other Gold players. The fee for this service is I don't know $10 I'm not putting much thought into this part.

      The point is: would this "service" reduce the amount of shittards on CoD servers? Would it be anything like the original goal of the SA $5 subscription fee? In that it's supposed to make people treat things with a little more gravity?

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        March 19, 2012 4:52 PM

        i doubt they give much of a shit what kind of stuff goes in within the game, i mean maturity level and stuff. people buy it like hotcakes, and they would not want to segregate or alienate there audience or come off as insulting.

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      March 19, 2012 3:18 PM

      Fix the multiplayer bugs, glitches, hacks/cheats, and balance issues then maybe we can talk. The way you have handled the series post recent doesn't leave much hope. You tried hard to show a distinction between Battlelog and Elite's fees.

      You have to make the game fun for people to want to play to begining with before you even start thinking about adding a subscription level. I don't know about other people but I have kind of lost a bit of interest in playing BF3 online because of all the linger issues. Absolutely love the series as a whole but the problems are too much.

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      March 19, 2012 3:21 PM

      Good for them! They haven't been hearing enough complaints from their fans, so their call centers have been underworked. They're just trying to SAVE JOBS, people!

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      March 19, 2012 3:29 PM

      If it meant that BF on consoles had constant updates and wasn't shackled to a yearly disc release, I think it'd be a smart move, assuming the price is right.

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      March 19, 2012 4:50 PM

      Jesus fucking christ chucklefucks, have any of you actually read the article? The quote is pretty much almost identical to "like any business we're always looking at all possibilities"

      It is no more committal than that. This is a non-story. This is not news. It's worse than nothing!!

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        March 19, 2012 4:56 PM

        worse than nothing!!!!11111

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          March 19, 2012 5:04 PM

          It's true! It's rumor mongering, which is literally worse than nothing because it spreads misinformation, the antithesis of knowledge. >:[

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      March 19, 2012 5:55 PM

      "We have people in Stockholm and North America and other parts of the world that are in this every single hour of every single day," he said. "365 days a year. We have an operations team at DICE to look at telemetry data. How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff."

      REALLY? If so the people doing this job must be 1 step above retarded because they don't seem to be getting the messages!

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      March 19, 2012 9:01 PM

      "success of Call of Duty Elite"

      HAHAHA COD Elite is the biggest money grab in gaming history and everyone who bought it is kicking themselves. Is COD elite even working now now?

      If BF series goes to Pay 2 Play ill stick with BF3. I dont mind buying DLC's when they are worth it but this is too far.

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      March 19, 2012 11:59 PM

      It's funny to hear this. If i remember correctly back at E3 last year they kinda ripped the Elite subscription service on stage. saying battlelog is free and does the same thing. Honestly, I thought Elite was a Bust. I bought the game but would never buy a sub. service just for maps. EA go F yourself! I only rented BF3 because of the online pass bullshit.

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      March 20, 2012 6:22 AM

      I haven't bought BF3 because of the stupid Karkland DLC -- I didn't preorder and wasn't willing to pay $75 to get the full game -- and now they're talking about continuing the fleecing with the next version?

      No thanks -- I don't play it enough for it to buy DLC much less subscribe to this bullshit.

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      March 20, 2012 6:32 AM

      frib is "looking at" buying a Battlefield game one of these days, but isn't ready to talk about specific plans.

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