Thanks to Xbox One we now know why EA 'REALLY' dropped its online pass programme

Last week it was reported that EA was doing away with its stupid online pass programme. And everyone went "yay! That nasty evil corporation (that makes FANTASTIC video games) has finally come to its senses". Kinda.

EA was quoted as saying: “Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format”

“We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”

Which all sounded like some corporate bullshit. And now that the Xbox reveal has happened, that bullshit is confirmed.

You see there is now no need for EA to have such a system as the Xbox One is going to do it for them with it’s registration of games to specific XBL accounts requirement.

This way the spread of second hand games is somewhat muted as EA will continue to be able to get people to pay for their games at retail rather than by way of the second hand market as punters will be engineered down that path by the Xbox One.

Rather nice timing for EA to get their announcement out a week or two before the Xbox One reveal  to get build some respect / lurve from the gaming community wasn't it? 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining about the new Xbox One system to connect software to an XBL account. After all, that disk that you buy with the latest Call of Duty on it is all you own, you actually are licensing the COD software for use, you never actually own that. 

DLC is tied to an Xbox account and no one really complains about that - this new approach by Xbox to games is simply the same principle. 

This is really just an example of technology catching up to the needs of the software vendors to help them extract better 'economic rents' for their very large investments'. 

But how much does it annoy you?