EA Access Skipping PlayStation Because Sony Doesn’t Think It’s Good Value

Yesterday’s announcement of EA Access was an interesting one, as EA partnered up with Microsoft to give Xbox One owners a subscription-based model to gain access to some of their most popular games. Coming in at either £3.99 for a month or £19.99 for a whole year, you can get FIFA 14, Madden NFL 14, Peggle 2 and Battlefield 4, as well as early access to advanced game trials and 10% off digital purchases.

Alongside Games with Gold from Microsoft, it’s another attempt to emulate the successes of PlayStation Plus, and it seems that this competition could be the reason behind EA Access only coming to Xbox gamers. Speaking to Game Informer, a Sony representative said, “We evaluated the EA Access subscription offering and decided that it does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect.”

The Sony rep continued on to tout PS+, saying, “PlayStation Plus memberships are up more than 200% since the launch of PlayStation 4, which shows that gamers are looking for memberships that offer a multitude of services, across various devices, for one low price. We don’t think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer.”

It’s an interesting stance, but it’s also one that could have certain remifications for the games on PS+ going forward. With EA keen to push EA Access, its games would surely be much less likely to appear on PS+ in future, or focus more on their distant back catalogue. Meanwhile, ties between the publishing giant and Microsoft could become ever closer, following on from the timed exclusivity deals on PopCap games.

Source: Game Informer

24 Comments

  1. Sony may be perfectly justified in saying this, they would have been briefed more specifically on how exactly the service will work. It may be monthly rentals where you don’t get to keep the games after they’re swapped out. The games may stay in rotation for 3 months at a time. From the publicly released information, we are unable to determine the true value at this point.

  2. It seems to me by signing up, you’re always going to be about a year behind the new releases…

    When FIFA 15 releases, you’ll be playing FIFA 14 for a year, when BF Hardline releases, you’ll still be playing BF4 for a year & so forth.

    That’s unless you wanna pay the subscription and buy FIFA 15 which then pretty much makes your subscription pointless the next year as you’ll already have purchased FIFA 15 which you’ll get for free on your subscription. I see Sony’s point.

  3. Surely it’s my decision if it benefits me and not Sony’s decision.

  4. Sounds like sour grapes from Sony. Very childish statement, I’m surprised they’ve even commented on it.

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