Ubisoft Predictably Wants to Emulate EA’s Project Ten Dollar

In Ubisoft’s annual earnings call, the company said that they will be ‘œlooking very carefully’ at EA’s ‘œProject Ten Dollar’ and will ‘œprobably follow that line at some [point] in the future.”

Ubisoft said that they have been using similar ideas before in games like Assassin’s Creed 2, and so they ‘œhave the system in place to actually generate more revenue on the second hand market.’

EA’s scheme aims to use small, $10 add-on purchases to gain extra revenue from gamers, most commonly used for DLC and other small pieces of content. It also includes offering free, one-time download content codes in new games, to entice people into buying brand new copies. However recently, EA announced they would be using the tactic to curb used games sales even further by making multiplayer in their sports games a $10 purchase if the users didn’t buy a new copy.

Making games pay twice (three, four times?) for a game seems utterly insane to me, but publishers are starting to get stroppy over the fact they’re ‘œlosing’ so much money (fully described in Phil’s great piece) to pre-owned sales. The question is how far will this go? So far multiplayer has been deemed an add-on feature, will using the right trigger be next, or perhaps games will just become a slew of unlock codes, demanding $10 after $10. It should, however, be no surprise that Ubisoft wants to jump onto the gouging, because as you know they’ve been so consumer friendly in the past.