Yesterday, Electronic Arts announced its new EA Access program which grants users unlimited access to EA’s most popular titles, early access to new titles, and a 10% discount on all digital purchases. The subscription-based service costs $5-per-month or $30-per-year, and is the first such service from a third-party publisher on this generation of consoles.
The service will be testing beta soon, and the initial line-up of games will include FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4. NHL 15, FIFA 15, NBA LIVE 15, and Dragon Age: Inquisition are expected to be available for early-access once it gets closer to their release dates. Unfortunately for PlayStation users, this service will only be available on the Xbox One.
The fact that EA Access will be exclusive to the Xbox One was considered a big win for Microsoft, and made a lot of PlayStation 4 owners upset with EA. However, as it turns out, EA actually did approach Sony about making the service available on the PS4, but was turned down. Apparently, Sony believes that EA’s subscription plan isn’t as good as Sony’s PlayStation Plus offerings.
“We evaluated the EA Access subscription offering and decided that it does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect,” a Sony representative told Game Informer. “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.”
Sony’s reasoning with turning EA down seems fairly petty and anti-competitive. The company is essentially preventing third-party services that compete with Sony’s own services from being on the PlayStation platform. The worst part is that they’re doing it under the guise of protecting PlayStation users.
Read more about the story at Ars Technica.
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