EA Sports subscription service planned?

Source: Sports blog Pasta Padre.

What we heard: Earlier this month, EA Sports president Peter Moore used his MI6 2011 keynote address to reveal that Electronic Arts is planning to create cross-platform, cross-game profiles for its sports titles. Now, according to a report on Pasta Padre, the publisher is going one step further. The sports blog is claiming to have received a document outlining EA Sports' plan to offer an annual subscription that will offer various perks to participants.

According to the document, the subscription will offer benefits for the Madden NFL, FIFA, NHL, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, NCAA Football, and SSX series. The memo is also accompanied by the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 logos, indicating that the program may be limited to those two platforms. Among the listed benefits of the subscription are:

--Discounts on all downloadable content for participating EA Sports console-based titles.
--Free and exclusive EA Sports downloadable content for console-based titles.
--Full downloadable versions of participating titles before they come out in stores.
--An exclusive "recognition badge" that will appear both in-game and on players' Web profiles.
--The ability to transfer paid content from current titles to future versions of said titles.
--Free and exclusive opportunities to extend players' EA Sports experience to the PC and Web.

The leaked memo also said that the subscription has not yet been priced. However, Pasta Padre reports that surveys are circulating that put potential prices in a range of $15 to $35, depending on how many of the options a person wants. The surveys also say that downloadable versions of games will be available to subscribers up to a full week before they arrive in stores.

The official story: As of press time, EA Sports reps had not responded to requests for comment.

Bogus or not bogus?: Looking not bogus that EA Sports is considering an annual subscription. Pasta Padre's record is fairly reliable, and Moore's talk of a unified cross-platform and cross-game experience jibes with an EA Sports-wide subscription service.

However, if an EA Sports subscription service sounds familiar, that's because rumors of a "season pass" for the label surfaced in late 2008. That scheme, which was also outed by a leaked survey, was going to offer subscribers 22-33 percent off of selected titles. And as is now known, that plan never came to fruition.