EA revolutionizes gaming with Netflix-style subscription service – but only on Xbox One
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EA Access is a new subscription service, available exclusively through Xbox Live, for $5 per month or $30 annually. EA is starting with an invite-only beta test and just four games, but “more titles [are] being added,” and “it will launch for everyone on Xbox One soon.” It’s not entirely clear how EA Access will be implemented, but it seems you’ll have access to a special app that lets you download the games from The Vault. This app will also give you a 10% discount on digital downloads of upcoming games — and curiously, subscribers will also be able to “download upcoming EA games five days before the release date to play for a limited time.”
Battlefield 4: Free to play on the Xbox One, if you stump up $2.50 per month. Not bad.
While EA doesn’t say outright that The Vault is only for older games, it’s implied by the 10% discount for newer games. It sounds like EA Access will give you a 10% discount if you like to buy games at release, or you can wait a few weeks/months until it’s added to The Vault — kind of like waiting for your favorite TV show or movie to be added to Netflix, or waiting for a 75% sale on Steam. In either case, considering new games generally cost between $60 and $70, and a monthly subscription is just $5, EA Access is a rather good deal — even more so if you buy/play enough games to make the $30 annual subscription viable. Don’t forget, you could even use EA Access to rent an RPG for a month — a much more cost effective route than buying it out-right and re-selling it at a huge loss.
But why is it only on the Xbox One?
At this point, you might be wondering why EA Access is Xbox-only. Curiously, Sony was offered the same deal for the PS4, but turned it down because it didn’t represent “good value to the PlayStation gamer.” Sony also mentions the success of its own PlayStation Plus memberships, which provides free games in addition to other services. I don’t think this is the entirety of the story, though — I suspect, given the incredibly low price of EA Access, that Microsoft is footing some of the bill. Microsoft probably sees EA Access as a way of driving more people to buy an Xbox One — and given how far it has fallen behind the PS4, it’s more than willing to pay for such a boost. If EA is quietly demanding a big kickback for every new subscription, then Sony’s “bad value for money” statement makes a lot more sense.The other possibility, of course, is that Sony just doesn’t want to jump into bed with EA. Honestly, the gaming world is a little taken aback by EA Access — on the one hand, this is one of the best deals we’ve ever seen, but at the same time this is the same EA that is generally reviled by the gaming community for a variety of heinous offences over the years. As the saying goes, if something is too good to be true, it usually is — and EA doesn’t exactly have a history of over-delivering on its promises. I get the feeling that a sizable portion of the gaming community is waiting to see whether this is truly an all-you-can-eat deal (with decent food no less!), or whether there’s some kind of catch — like, some new form of DRM that ensures that EA has exclusive access to your firstborn’s stem cells. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Personally, I’m hoping that this inspires Valve to create a similar subscription service for PC gaming on Steam…
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