GameStop Welcomes EA’s Online Pass

We wrote earlier this month that EA would soon start charging people to play online–that is, if they bought their game used. If they bought the latest Tiger Woods new, their copy would come with a free Online Pass. There was speculation that GameStop, the leading used video game seller in the US, would not be pleased by this because they would have to discount their prices to accommodate the $10 online pass.

Not so. GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo believes the Online Pass could be a good thing. He thinks it could actually highlight the existence of DLC people may not know about. And he thinks that people who buy a used copy of Madden often don’t want to play online.

Here’s a quote from DeMatteo at GameStop’s annual quarterly investor conference call.

“There have been some questions concerning first user only content and the effect on our used business. We have not seen an impact thus far and, as a matter of fact, we will turn this into a positive with our ability to sell DLC through our investments made in technology to market and sell this content in our stores.”

We’ll see how this plays out for GameStop, especially if EA’s Online Pass generates significant revenue and other publishers and developers jump on the paid online access bandwagon.

[via GamePolitics]