EA Still Plan To Drop Online Passes

EA have reaffirmed their decision to drop online passes after Microsoft’s DRM U-turn last night.

EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg told Polygon :

“[There is] no change to our decision to discontinue Online Pass. It is dead. As we said a few weeks ago, none of our new EA titles will include online pass, and we are removing it from existing games as well. Nothing else on today’s news, but did want to be clear that our online pass decision was based on player feedback, and there’s no change.”

Many believed EA’s original decision in May was inspired by Microsoft’s first approach to DRM with their next gen machine.

Publishers including EA, Ubisoft and Activision were also rumoured to have pushed Microsoft to include such DRM measures in their new console, but Peter Moore categorically denied those claims in an interview with Polygon.

It was also believed that a special relationship had arisen between the two companies because of the extensive DRM that Microsoft has now dropped. However there is no evidence of yet to suggest this is the case.

Last night in an open letter to gamers, Don Mattrick outlined the Xbox One’s new approach, thanking gamers for feedback that has helped them “reshape the future” of the new console.