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 On 07/29/2014 at 06:41 PM by xDarthKiLLx See More From This User » |
For those of you who've yet to find out, EA announced a new service of theirs that will be coming to Xbox 1.
For a flat rate of 5 bucks a month or 30 bucks a year (I may have the prices incorrect), you'll have access to a Vault of games published via EA, such as Madden 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4 as a start. Not unlike Playstation Plus or Games With Gold (though I assume that if you stop your subscription, the games become unplayable); though the obvious Best Value in all of this is Games With Gold, due to the fact that you actually get to keep the games regardless of how up-to-date your Gold subscription is.
Though hardly groundbreaking, it's nice to see more flat-rate play-as-much-as-you-can-handle type services out there.
I nearly forgot to mention that for select titles, holders of the aforementioned 'scription will get early access to upcoming games, such as Dragon Age: Inquisition.
For myself, early access doesn't mean all that much; I get around to playing most major releases in my own sweet time.
Is this service on the whole good or bad for gaming, though? Personally, I won't ever pay full price for something I can get at a discount...that's just smart , common-sense consumerism at play for me. That being so, I can imagine that I'm not the only person of this mindset. The selection of games on offer will be what clinches this for people, I'm sure. If the yearly-release games end up being on offer via the Vault, EA might be shooting themselves in the foot. Or, perhaps they're looking to sew up the market via microtransactions.
There are lots of possibilities here.
Also bear in mind that I don't have all the information on this service, and being as Bioware is the only EA affiliate I truly give a shit about, I seriously doubt I'll give a damn about EA Access once I make my way to Current-Gen gaming systems. Also, this service is only on offer for Xbox One for the time being (?).
I'm more curious about what you all think on this. Is it viable? Will it be the death of Madden on the X1? Should we ever forgive EA for that online pass bullshit that marred 2011-12?
What do you think?
The idea of subscription gaming is pretty interesting to me, but Sony and EA both need to release more info on their services before I can make a decision on the viability. If they provide a solid amount of games for the price, I can see myself diving in, but something tells me they're going to be restricted to a small or "meh" library.
I hope I'm wrong, though.
I'm not opposed to subscription based, NEtflix type gaming, but from what I understand the prices for Sony's new system are outrageous. I'm sure that will change, but if they do this right, I think a lot of people will be into it.
I just happen to wonder what this means for developers. I mean how much of that 5 or 30 are they gonna get for the games on the service? I mean if there gonna throw any games released for Xbone including new titles straight out the release gate then where is the developers cut going? Especially if its new released games like Dragon Age you mentioned. This seems like a nice idea but honestly this might just bite them in the end.
I personally buy a game full price if I like it. I dont have a Xbone yet but when I do I dont know if ill use the service. I might for older titles.
I think it devalues games in general. I like buying a game. It makes it feel substantial and valuable. With a service that offers up tons of games for a monthly fee, what's any one of them worth? Not much. They're throw away games.
I mean, I like getting a deal on a game as much as the next person, but when it gets to a kind of Netflix type service where you have everything for one low monthly fee, I like it at first, but then I lose interest, because I can watch anything anytime for almost nothing. The value of those things becomes almost nil and I go find something more rare to care about. Sounds kind of weird doesn't it, but my music listening and movie watching has kind of suffered from all-you-can-eat type buffet services. I just don't care anymore if I can have everything all the time. Nothing is special anymore.
Your prices are wrong Darth, it's $4.99 a month and $29.99 a year.
ha.. sorry, couldn't resist.
All joking aside though, I'm curious to see how all of this is going to work out. I may buy a year's worth just to test it out (It's only $30, which isn't bad for a full year of service). Before I do though, I'm definitely going to wait to see what kind of Red Tape they're going to be throwing around first.
The games you get through Gold are games you kept. It's not like PSN+ where you lose access to the full games once you stop payment for the service. Gold's games are usually older, but they are still good games.
I'm not a big fan of EA, so I doubt I would pay for any service they have. I'd much rather just buy the physical version of games after a nice price drop.
This makes me pretty wary of the future of gaming. I'm not opposed to subscription-based gaming in general. I love PS+. Not only do I get to play games for "free", but I more than make up for the cost of it with the savings from their sales.
I'm also not opposed to a Netflix-type subscription, where you pay a monthly fee for an unlimited access to a bunch of games. As much as I love buying and owning DVDs of my favorite movies, I still watch the hell out of Netflix.
What makes me wary is that this subscription is for EA games only. Although Netflix doesn't have every single movie ever made, it's still got a huge selection from a great variety of companies. If EA's model is successful, other companies might follow. And then there is a likelihood that all these companies will take their games off of PSN and the XBox store and you'll only be able to play them through subscriptions through companies. So in order to play any game you want to you'll have to be paying a monthly subscription to maybe a dozen different companies every month. Hopefully this will never happen, but I am kind of worried that this might be the path that games take.
Given EA's track record I'm going to hold off before deciding if this will be a boon or a bust for gamers. This could be seen as yet another attempt to cut out the second hand market but at the same time it could be helpful for some who prefer the netflix type web access to EA titles on the fly. I myself just wonder if they'l sneak in some kind of origin mandatory install to keep track of this service. either way I'll hold judgement till I see the full details.
At first glance I like this idea. You get to play some of the new sports games a week early, you get a "freebie game", and get to enjoy a bunch of their catalogue whenever you want. This is perfect for someone like me who plays just the single player in FPS, and I get to play the newest sports game early to see if I want to buy a physical copy. I hope EA will offer roster updates/uniform updates through out the year instead of having them to a certain point before cutting off the game.
The problem I have with this is at some point game companies are going to jump on this, and at some some company is going to release one of their big budget games as a subscription exclusive (which you'll probably have to pay for anyways), or something of the sort. It will force your average customer to not only pay for a subscription service they might not want just to have access to buy a game they want to play.
I'm not sure about getting to keep your games part of this, as I've read the opposite-- you don't keep your games after cancelled subscriptions. I would hate to see a flood of publishers all try to do this now. From what I understand, you will get free crappy games, and a discount on new games, but you still need to sub for it all.
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