EA VP of European publishing, Javier Ferreira, believes that subscription models can work for mobile games and help drives sales….
For the UK I am not so sure – as The Inquirer neatly points out, the whole pullava regarding Mr C. Frog and his irritating ringtone really did alientate end-users as regards paying subscriptions for Mobile-related digital products.
Actually, tangent time…. more insiduous than ringtone “selling by subscription” are these “non-entity” SMS services now ,which provide you with some (obviously random) piece of information on a daily basis, in return for high fees – has anyone else seen these outside of UK?
The Ads for them tend to be prevalent on music channels, and say something like “find out daily who your future husband/wife might be” – for £4.50/week!
Did anyone do the math and see that comes to well over £20/month?? That’s more than a lot of Mobile tariffs! And at least you get a handset with those!
Anyhoo, I digress. EA are keen to revive subscriptions with a mix of flat-rate data from operators, and good marketing.
My take: people hate paying for a service they are not getting – so it better work first time, every time, if they are going to do it!
[Via: The Inquirer]