This isn't a bashing on Sony, but rather a compliment.

I too had fallen for some of the “Sony wants to cater to the gamer more” theories.  After E3 last year, it seems that they had really managed to show Microsoft that the gaming community was not interested in DRM or Digital Only ownership (or Kinect in the box it seems).  The gaming community rejoiced that Sony had saved them from the evils that Microsoft had intended.

 I myself was more in the middle.  I liked some aspects of it and also hated others.  But, I did recognize that it was more of an obvious direction of the future than anything else.  If you have any investment in the Apple ecosystem, Microsoft’s plan was a big step up from that.

As we all know, a little over a year later, we sit here today and the consumers have spoken with their wallets.  The PS4 is clearly their system of choice and Microsoft has 180’d themselves to the point that their eyes can’t stop spinning in their head.

This is where when we have finally learned that we have all been duped.

When Sony turned down the EA Access package, I could have just assumed that they simply didn’t like the cost model EA had proposed or some other business reason.  But when Sony announced that they had decided for all of us that it was a bad deal and that they did it to protect us, I knew something was wrong. One thing to remember is that gamers don’t have to pay for the EA program to play EA games, it is an option of theirs if they want it.

Sony allows Netflix and other such services, why not a gaming related one on a gaming system?

The reason is too obvious of course.  They didn’t want publisher DRM, because they wanted their own Sony DRM instead.  They want complete control of the pie.  Sony wants to decide who gets paid and how much.  Based on the future of PS Now, they will control the whole pie.  If a publisher doesn’t want to go through Sony’s store and pay what Sony wants, then go to retail and pay what they want and all of the costs of distribution.  Had Sony accepted the EA program, they would have gotten only a small fraction of the $2.50 per month that EA was collecting.  Also, they would have had EA selling their digital product direct to the consumer and further reducing their cut/control.  Sony also knew that soon enough, almost all of the publishers of any size would have their own “store within a store”.  All control over the bigger publishers would be lost.  Microsoft wanted the same thing, but they were dumb enough to tell us up front.

I am very proud of the fact that Sony has pulled of one of the most amazing marketing tricks.  They managed to convince almost all of the gamers and most of the media that they were not implementing DRM because they wanted to protect the gamers.  They rode that wave to a huge lead in introducing a new console.  Meanwhile, they are working real hard to ensure that now that they have a market advantage in console sales, they will have complete control of the inevitable digital future. 

Don’t blame Sony, they just copied Apples business model.  Apple said all of the same things 10 years ago when they were convincing us to go all digital with our music.  I just can’t believe we all fell for it AGAIN!

Source = ME

Wow! Nice post, I was thinking along the same lines. Sony has always been about pushing out something "new" and forcing their customers to buy accessories and memory expansion and such, why would they change their business model now?

I don't think you understant what having choices mean, this is the difference of the Sony approach and the MS approach:

- Sony did not judge it was relevant to break the disk based games to push for digital, they let the physical media intact (traditional if you will) and in parallel give incentives to people to go download via good prices and offers like PS+, maybe PSNow when it comes out of beta, but for now, I think it cost so much that it will price itself out of the market.

- Apple/Google/Netflix all offer cloud stored collections of media that you stream, heck, even Sony has their own music and movie streaming service... Apple did not invent that, there were, and there are still, many legal music download services, however, iTunes is the only one that is truly succesful as far as I know.

Genuis!
Is that why Amazon has a digital store for PS4 games?
I would rather pay $49 £40 to Sony for PS Plus than £20 to half a dozen publishers for older games!

I'm confused, I see no compliment. Is this a sort of slow clap for Sony?

I too question why they would deem the EA package a bad deal or not good enough for playstation. Especially with the prices they are giving on PSNow. : http://kotaku.com/playstation-now-is-still-way-too-expensive-1614022375

But I don't exactly feel duped by them. I'm not so sure DRM control was the sole reason either.

Sony rejected EA Access because it is very similar to their up and coming PS NOW service and that it will compete against it?

I'm shocked! Thank you Captain!

Still love Sony, too many great games on their systems.

If it wasn't a Sony bashing thread, you'd try to be objective and come up with reasons both negative AND positive for Sony to turn EA away. 

So I'll reiterate some other possible reasons, just to balance your one sided and narrow minded view:

I- Firstly it obviously competes with and potentially devalues ps+ (you'd have to think EA games would be less likely to become available to plus, or potentially they could be even more outdated versions of the sports titles).

II- End user support. For the tiny fraction of the fee Sony would receive, they'd be expected to manage the purchase and delivery as with any digital purchase, but the fact that it's not just a single transaction for a single item and rather the support of a yearly or monthly subscription service, opens the door to many more potential issues.
Sony would be the first point of call for end user support when anything went wrong (and with ea/origin on top of ps+, that might not be trivial). Reading the many threads on GAF, I'm sure Sony's CS support lines are busy enough as is regarding the various issues that are thrown up with with their own ps+ without generating more with an extra layer of potential pitfalls on top. There would no doubt be grey areas - problems where Sony think it's an EA issue, EA think it's a Sony issue. Not appetising.

III- It's not just EA - you have to think further ahead. Other publishers are likely to expect to be able to be given the chance to offer a competing (but maybe not even necessarily that similar) service for their own titles. This would not only multiply the effects of the above concerns but, thinking it through a bit more, you'd have to factor in each publisher's competing service's rules, regulations and nuances... and you are now presenting an even more complex problem for Sony CS.

Taking this further, it's not difficult to imagine the potential for a sea of confusion customer-side when Johnny Gamer expects certain things of one service that is actually only a part of a rival service he also subscribes to. This would only compound with every new service added. All customers would go directly to Sony to air their grievances and have their minds set at ease. Those CS staff are going to spend the next few years in and out of training courses like an mcse.

IV- Having to set up an auto-renewal with a credit card held on file. Sony don't really want to go there, do they? And that Johnny Gamer guy - what if he forgets to cancel and the service auto-renews - Sony CS have to deal with enough "my dog bought COD Ghosts when it scratched its arse on my DS4 help me please!" kind of gripes as it is.

The compliment is in the fact that they convinced a moajority of the gaming community to watch their right hand that was waving at them and telling them that DRM is bad.  All the time, their left hand was ensuring that when DRM was more readily accepted in gaming, they would have the control of it.  It was a genious marketing ploy! 

Little confused, I see no DRM here that would be in the same ball park as what you mention, DRM for digital downloads or streaming (the latter is content you never own) is not the same as a disc. A nice theory.

I agree with the OP but mostly find it fascinating that this whole EA matter has become such a big thing.