The very controversial Online Pass program that was start by Electronic Arts and then copied by most of the major publishers is at an end. EA has confirmed that they will be killing off the one-time use access code program going forward. None of the new EA titles will be using the Online Pass feature.

According to EA, the company listened to buyer feedback, which suggested that buyers simply didn’t like it; and EA is responding by eliminating the use of it going forward. Interestingly, EA says nothing about what they plan to do going forward to help recapture lost revenue from the sale of used titles. EA also didn’t indicate how successful the Online Pass program was at recapturing such lost revenue.

With EA’s decision to discontinue the use of the Online Pass, it begs the question whether others such as Sony, Ubisoft, Warner, and Codemasters will also discontinue the use of the Online Pass.

Sources suggest to us that the decision to kill off the Online Pass might not be that big of a surprise, as many are starting to suspect that the cost of new games is going up on the new Next Generation console systems from both Microsoft and Sony. Neither Microsoft nor Sony nor the 3rd party software publishers have confirmed a price increase yet, but our sources suggest they are examining it closely.