EA have announced that they’ve scrapped their online pass. Going forward you’ll no longer need to use the extra code to play your games online. But what else have they got in store?

The online pass was a code included with new EA games that you input in the games menu to enable extra online and multiplayer content. The pass was a way to combat the increased sales of second hand games with many players waiting for the price to drop before making the plunge. Even if EA lost out on new game sales, second hand game buyers would need to buy the online pass from them to gain access to the popular multiplayer and online game modes.

As well as FIFA, other EA titles such as Battlefield, Madden, NHL and other all used this feature and it was also adopted by other top game publishers such as Ubisoft and Activision.

Players weren’t happy with this format though and responding to feedback EA have announced that the online pass won’t be needed with any future titles.

What does that mean for the future?

Back in 2011, EA Sports President Peter Moore announced plans for players to have a single social profile across all EA Sports games. We’ve seen a move towards this with the introduction of EASFC which features a player level and credits which carry forward to future titles.

Next in his grand scheme was cross platform engagement and the ability for your profile and interaction with your friends’ profiles to span across different platforms including consoles, PC and mobile devices. This looks like it will come to fruition to after 1,500 EA engineers spent 18 months completely rebuilding their backend infrastructure to make it possible.

Maybe we can look forward to this once the next generation of consoles are released.

Finally on the agenda was downloadable digital content and micro transactions (think Euro downloadable content and FIFA Points for Ultimate Team packs). Giving away the online content for free could pave the way for addition premium downloadable content which could prolong the life of games titles and bring in more revenue to EA.

This type of revenue would see higher profit margins because of its digital distribution and lack of any expensive to produce, physical form. Again, we’ve already seen a shift in this direction and we can expect the trend to continue.

Subscription Model

Could we see a move to a full subscription model for EA Sports games? Gamesbeat seems to think that a subscription model would be the ultimate nirvana for the gaming industry giant. They see a model (maybe akin to Star Wars: The Old Republic) where players pay a monthly fee rather than fork out a lump sum for each title, for a game that’s updated, improved and added to on an ongoing basis.

An who can forget the alleged leaked memo on PastaPadre back in April 2011?

If a subscription model was ever introduced although it might initially meet some resistance it could pave the way for much faster game evolution with developers being able to continuously respond to customer feedback and make adjustments on the fly. This would eclipse the big step between titles that we have at the moment where some are well received and some are not.

Would you be prepared to pay a monthly subscription for EA Sports games? Let us know in the comments.