Ubisoft to join pre-owned assault?

Ubisoft is likely to be the next major publisher to deter consumers from buying pre-owned games with DLC incentives.

Speaking about downloadable content during yesterday’s fiscal earnings call, the publisher cited rival EA’s $10 solution as an example of how they could generate revenue from second-hand sales, according to Kotaku.

EA has been at the forefront of this initiative, offering free DLC to those who bought new copies of Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, as well as the recently announced EA Online Pass for EA Sports titles.

Anyone buying pre-owned copies of these games must pay $10 to access the DLC or online functionality. Now Ubisoft is considering incorporating the system into its future releases.

Most of the games we are releasing next year will have from the start downloadable content available,” said Ubisoft’s CFO Alain Martinez. We are looking very carefully at what is happening with EA regarding what we are calling the $10 dollar solution, and will probably be following that line sometime in the future.”

CEO Yves Guillemot added: We have been using keys starting last year on our products. Those keys were allowing some customers to have content if they were buying the product in specific stores, so we have the system in place to actually generate more revenue on the second-hand market.

We are building the content to make sure it can be beneficial for both groups to actually pay enough on one side and on the other side when you don’t buy the gfame as a full game that you’re interested to buy the new offering and are interested to pay to get that.”

Other publishers that have used DLC codes to reward gamers who purchase their games new include Sony and Codemasters.