In an interview with Business Week, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello shed some light on what the “Ten Dollar Project” is all about. The sole idea of the project is to reward gamers who purchase a new game with free coupons which can be redeemed for downloadable content and upgrades. Whereas used games buyers would have to shell out an extra $10 to buy the missing add-ons which essentially means to take back some of the revenue EA is losing with used games sales.
The used games market makes retailers like gamestop and others about $2 billion in revenues in the U.S alone which is about a third of all the games sold in the U.S.
Currently in place systems like Mass Effect 2’s Cerberus Network, Dragon Age’s DLC network are working examples of the “Ten Dollar Project.”
Riccitiello also revealed that they plan to add multiplayer to all their games in the future to make sure buyers of new games hold onto their copies for as long as possible.