And there we go, my ps plus will soon be worthless when each publisher has their own sub plan and they remove their games from ps plus.

I guess consumers have to vote with their wallet.
In one way this could be good for customers as publishers have to put value to their service to make it appealing to customers. If their service doesn't have many good games, no one will subscribe to the service.

Wait, what? I get you are always anti MS but this really is ridiculous.

Yea he always tries to rile up MS fans. I think most just ignore his subtle and blatant jabs.

So I was thinking about this and I've realised why it is bad. Sure it's good that Ubisoft and other publishers may be able to offer services which allow consumers to get games for less as long as they keep paying (even if not new games). $30 a year for 3-4 games which just more than a year ago cost $60 each is good value. But the problem is the division of services because each publisher wants a piece of the pie.

Now I'm going to compare these new services to ones that already exist for TV. Amazon Prime and Netflix you'd think are the comparable services but they aren't. The services which compare to these are BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD. The reason these compare is because these services, while streaming content, all contain the TV companies programmes and nothing else. While all free, the don't really compete either because they offer completely different things. EA Access, Ubisoft Play or whatever will be the same, they won't compete because their games inside the services will never appear on other services.

If companies start restricting their games, they will no longer appear on services like PS+ or Xbox Live. They will be locked behind individual services because these companies want direct income as opposed to indirect via other services like how PS+ currently works. In time you'll get 5 or 6 subscription services while PS+ and Xbox Live is left with nothing to offer as those publishers won't let them put their games on them.

What these companies needed to do was to allow 2 or more independent companies (like Netflix and Amazon Prime) to create streaming/download services which compete against each other while offering the same thing (like ISPs/Cable TV). Each service offers different value yet also includes some of the same content, games will come and go depending on the current offer or deals in place, just like Netflix. This is a service where there is real value because it means while you can go out and buy a new full price game long before it will appear on these services but then people won't mind paying $5 a month to have an near endless supply of games a little older to play if they want. EA, Ubisoft and co just get a cut of the profits. PS+ and Xbox Live Games will still exist as they work the on the same principle. Everyone wins as we then have the real freedom of choice.

by the end of this gen i will have a $50 plus servvice.

you will have Gold 60 Ea 30, ubi 30, t2 30, SE 30, Acti 30 and so on.  Enjoy hundredths of $ a year in extra services.

Ill side with sonys view, their mentality is best pro me pro PS owner.  MS is pro diping in your pocket a dozen times, but you are ok with it as long as they make $.  Or are we pretanding ms is not making $ from this.  

And you think that EA Access' primary focus is to offer you free games? No, it's for you to buy more EA content digitally. EA Access is a service that clearly shares a lot with PS+ and Gold, you get free games of the publishers choosing and deals with it and the whole multiplayer thing is exactly what people are worried about EA will do, hiding content of their games behind this subscription and since we're talking about freaking EA here, this is something I can easily see them doing.

I brought facts, you just chose to ignore them and post completely senseless bullshit.

What is this crap about the clause for using the MS servers to download the games? The clause is "release your game on our machine and give us a cut of every game sold" it has been that way ever since digital downloading on consoles began. Why do you think people constantly pointed out how downloads are much faster on 360 than PS3? It was because they had better servers and it certainly wasn't the third parties that provided these better servers on 360.

Now for reasons why it is completely irrational to expect similar prices:

1. PSNow server costs.

Even if, which is not the case, we assume that EA has to pay for the servers on their service directly, then every download would still just be a one time  transaction. Every time you use PSNow you're using Sonys servers to stream the game. What do you think is more expensive for the server holder? One 30GB download or streaming a game let's say for one week/3 hours a day? You can say that is not your problem, but that would be just stupid, the cost of a service or good always influence its price and PSNow has way higher costs. You wouldn't say that a taxi should be as expensive as riding the bus, because both basically take you somewhere.

2. The actual service.

I already said it, but I'll say it again, if you compare the services for what they actually do, then they are hardly alike at all. PSNow lets you (or will let you) stream your games to several different devices, you basically get the hardware to play the games with the games, EA Access lets you download games on your X1. You have a way bigger collection of games from different publishers to choose from and it is actually completely yours to choose which game you want to pay for (and for how long) on PSNow, on EA Access you pay for the whole vault, even if you possibly only want one game out of it.

Well, perhaps they do, but nobody is forcing customers to subscribe to the service so where exactly is the problem? You can vote with your wallet. $ony doesn't even give you the option.

according to puggsly you are a parasire if you vote with your wallet.

Me buying PS4 and Plus is me voting, they give me an option and it is PS and Plus.  MS snake oiled all their fans, luckly i never got gold as i saw its value was lolz compared to plus on PS4.

If I'm subscribing to all those services, they all must be doing a great job appealing to me. Which is... unrealistic. I would only subscribe to the services that appeal to me.

Also, if I'm paying for all those services. That means I'm getting access to significantly more content than a person only subscribing to PS+. Did you consider that?

I'm okay with MS allowing options. Even some Sony fans want EA Access, but they can't have it because Sony is the arbiter of good values. Yet PS Now is somehow a great value. $15 a month to play FFXIV is also a great value. Go figure!