The new Ultimate Plus Edition of EA FC 27 leaves soccer and sports game expert Dennis Zirkler with a more than uneasy feeling.
160 euros! That’s how much the Ultimate Plus Edition of EA FC 27 costs on consoles. For that, you get two full-price games and a kebab. Or a whole lot of other things that won’t become largely worthless after twelve months.
Anyone who buys this is giving EA two particularly valuable things: a pile of money well before release and your free time well into the new year.
Here’s what’s included in the Ultimate Plus Edition
For the extra cost, EA is primarily including content for Ultimate Team in the package. Included are:
- 10,000 FC Points worth just under 100 euros
- the Premium Passes for the first five seasons
- up to seven days of early access
- a Hall of FUT player selection
- an additional slot for Evolutions
On paper, this sounds like a massive amount of bonus content at first.The catch is in the fine print.
The 10,000 FC Points won’t be credited to your account in full at launch. EA spreads them out over five monthly payments. So you pay the full price right away, but a significant portion of the package is only handed out to you gradually.
There’s hardly any reasonable explanation for this. EA doesn’t have to manufacture and ship the points—they’re just a number in the game. They could unlock the entire amount on the first day. Instead, the publisher withholds the currency you’ve already paid for and gives you a new portion each month.
For EA, this is obviously ideal.
The money is in your account long before release, because the Ultimate Plus Edition is only available for pre-order until August 31—even though FC 27 isn’t released until late September. That alone is, in and of itself, a sneaky FOMO tactic.
At the same time, there’s regularly a new reason to relaunch EA FC 27, collect the points, and—in the best-case scenario—spend them right away in the store.
And if the packs turn out to be nothing but junk again, ideally you’ll just buy a few more points right away.
Five Premium Passes Turn Every Break Into a Money-Losing Venture
The Premium Passes for the first five seasons are just as bad: With a pass purchased individually, you can decide beforehand whether you like the rewards and whether you’ll even feel like playing the game in the coming weeks. In the Ultimate Plus Edition, you’ve already paid for five of these passes before you’ve even played a single minute.
You’re no longer just wondering if you want to play. The amount you’ve already spent is always lingering in the back of your mind. If you skip a season, you’re missing out on content and rewards that have long since been paid for. If you lose interest after two months, you’re leaving three more Premium Passes on the table.
That’s exactly the feeling this bundle is banking on. EA is essentially selling you five months of guilt.
The so-called “savings package” remains a bad deal
At this point, some will surely object: There are many people in Germany who play nothing but FC—I know several myself. For those who would buy all the Premium Passes anyway and regularly top up their FC Points, the Ultimate Plus Edition might even be a better deal.
That may well be true according to EA’s own calculations.But EA came up with those calculations itself.
The publisher sets the price of FC Points, determines how much a Premium Pass costs, and decides what value you get in return. EA also determines how quickly your cards will be rendered obsolete by new promos and which packs are currently available in the store. All of this self-priced content is then bundled and sold as an attractive package.
It’s reminiscent of a store that sells a bottle of water for ten euros and touts five bottles for 40 euros as a bargain. Mathematically, you’re saving money, but the original price is still absurd.
With FC Points, there’s the added factor that for just under 100 euros, you’re not buying a fixed value:You’re buying the chance to get good cards. The 10,000 points could net you several strong players. It’s much more likely, however, that they’ll disappear within minutes into packs whose most exciting contents are an 84-rated goalkeeper and a jersey you’ll never wear.
I just think this is crazy
EA is releasing a 160-euro version on top of the previous Ultimate Edition, thereby ensuring—almost as an afterthought—that the previous 110-euro maximum price suddenly seems reasonable.
At the same time, you’ll be investing at least five months of time and money into passes, points, evolutions, and cards that will be left behind in the old game by the time EA FC 28 comes out, at the latest. Then the same cycle starts all over again.
I just think this is crazy. Today, 160 euros is the extreme against which the 110-euro version is measured. Next year, Ultimate Plus might already be the reasonable mid-range option, because by then there’ll be the Ultimate Plus Pro Edition.
If the most expensive edition sells as often as I fear it will, EA is guaranteed to come up with a scheme to squeeze even more money out of the most loyal fans even faster.
And the sad thing is: they don’t even have to make a better soccer game to do it. All they have to do is hit the reset button, because FC is going to sell millions of copies anyway.
