http://www.gamespot.com/news/6253980.html.
But they're very long, so that makes it OK!

Just when you thought EA was being nice again... they go and charge you for something that is supposed to be free and to entice people to buy their fucking game. Now people will find another excuse to go torrent stuff.

"Following investor event, Wedbush's Pachter says publisher is prepping $10-$15 prerelease DLC, confirms Visceral's Jack the Ripper as downloadable for XBLA, PSN."
They haven't started anything.

Bizarre. Although I suppose it's a bit like going to view a pre-release movie at the cinema. If people will buy it, EA will sell it.

They also stated: "None of the proposals call for charging consumers for traditionally free game demos."
What it sounds like to me is that they could be considering a form of DLC content that would act as a taster for the full product. Also note that they only mentioned delivery via PSN/LIVE both of which are likely to want to "impose" a price on substantially large files.
Still, if they also considered the idea of then refunding the cost of the paid for pre-release content on purchase of the full product, I don't see any real problem with that. And if they're just going to essentially charge you twice for the same product, then most people will soon cotton on and the idea will simply fail.

From what I've read about this it sounds more like the plan is to charge people to be beta testers rather than to charge them for a demo. Not like that plan is any better.
Ahahahaha.... hahahaha...ha... that was a good one.

When did people think this? What did EA do that was so wonderful? I'd love to know. Claim to have heard people's complaints? Pretend to have abandoned harmful DRM with the announcement of something worse? It seems that if EA throw out enough misinformation and outright lies that they're guaranteed to ensure people buy at least some of it.

Well less shitty DRM is a start. Giving a bit of a shit for the PC is another start.
Of course, C&C4 came out so minus 300 points for that.

Yes, and Ubisoft calls their idea "not a DRM".

Yeah, exactly. C&C4 DRM was announced when EA's image was supposedly improving. That was long before we knew what direction Ubisoft were heading in. So I just don't see where this great big improvement was.
Then there's the fact that they closed two studios, yet decided that having them 'finish' and release their broken and subsequently unsupported games regardless. Yeah, okay they lost a lot of money. But their reputation taking a nose dive was no doubt more responsible for that than the recession.

Fomr what I've read of the plan, it sounds like mini-prequels released to build hype for the game, in other words the same stuff you'd get as DLC (IE: independant of the main story) but released beforehand. What the hell was battlefield 1943 a "long demo" of anyway?
Yeah but wasn't it one of the pandemic bosses who basically came out and said "yeah we had it coming because we never got the job done"? Or am I thinking of some other recently closed studio that was suffering from a case of the 3drelams'?

Doesn't sound so bad once you read the article.
Obviously there is much room for this to be abused, but it could also work pretty well. Will give people something to try (further defeating the pro-piracy arguments), and if it is a return to demos that are actually unique (like the Jedi Knight 2 demo, or even OFP's demo), then I am all for it.
I also wouldn't mind a pseudo episodic/shareware-esque approach. Buy the first few chapters, get a discount on the final release. Sort of a "no-risk" preorder.

And yet you miss the other important point that, so far, this has only been in reference to consoles. The PC didn't even get a mention. So there's really no need to compare one companies appalling DRM scheme to a possible scenario in which people pay for extended demonstrations of an upcoming product.

Well Pandemic went right downhill in their last few years. So I wasn't surprised to see them go. It was the timing that was way off. EA should have canned them before they started work on Saboteur. Not halfway through. Especially not requiring them to finish up what they're doing before they leave. There are all kinds of things wrong with that.

Oh ye of too much faith, it'd just change the rhetoric to "fuck you faceless corporation, now you want money for demos too?" and they'd pirate both demo and game